


Bring Back What Once Was Mine

by sweetestsight



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, Tangled AU, roger taylor: rebel leader, the cross is involved as well but in a minor kind of way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-15 20:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17535479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestsight/pseuds/sweetestsight
Summary: In which Roger gets cursed, escapes a tower, starts a revolution, saves a life, hits a lot of people with blunt kitchen utensils and is very much not a damsel in distress. A Tangled AU of sorts.





	1. Chapter 1

_Once upon a time there was a flower._

_This flower grew golden and bright. It was beautiful and sought after like nothing else in the world. Indeed there was nothing else like it in the world, for it had the rare ability to cure any ailment—even death._

_Our beautiful kingdom grew in much the same way. It built itself up from the poor and the unfortunate and carved its own place into the hills where power could truly thrive, and thrive it did. The royal family grew proud and strong, and the flower continued to shine in their throne room for centuries. They had built an immortal reign._

_When the queen became pregnant with her first and only child she did not look older than 25. It was her 287 th year on the throne. _

_Then she fell ill._

_In a desperate bid to save her and the unborn child the king depleted the flower’s magic entirely, making it into a potion which saved her life. A baby boy was born, with hair golden and bright and beautiful. The magic lay dormant in his heart until the day he would master its potential and allow for the family to reign eternal once more—but until then he was kept a secret, hidden away from the dangers of the outside world and any who would want to abuse his gift._

 

That’s the story that he was read as a kid, anyway. It’s lovely.

It’s also a complete crock of shit.

 

The day everything changed was a Wednesday.

How does he know that? Because he was always bored as shit on Wednesdays. Because there was absolutely nothing to do and hadn't been for four days, because he was always given Wednesday off from practicing with his gift but usually ended up practicing anyway and completely wearing himself out until he inevitably crashed in exhausted delirium in bed, because he lived in a tower where there was _nothing else to fucking do._

So the day everything changed was a Wednesday. And quite honestly, thank the gods for that.

It started like this:

“Fucking— _fuck!”_ someone grunted in the kitchen.

By virtue of living in a tower with no doors and only a window this was naturally a bit daunting. When he peeked around the corner all he could see was a man about his age, clutching his foot as he hobbled toward the couch, presumably after stubbing his toe. He was muttering angrily to himself with his face screwed up in pain but not even that could take away from his overall loveliness, and Roger must have gasped or swooned or _something_ because silver eyes snapped up to meet Roger’s in shock. The guy sucked in a breath then just stared. “My gods.”

He’d stood there dumbfounded as a post and Roger, like any self-respecting tower prisoner with a quick temper and a strong shoulder, had lobbed the nearest weapon directly at his head. The weapon, of course, being his trusty stainless coffee pot.

Trusty as always.

And that's how he, Roger, crown prince to the throne eternal, has come to be standing above the restrained, unconscious body of this would-be burglar, coffee pot in hand and ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

It's safe to say his week is about to get significantly more interesting.

 

Tying him to a chair is a process that takes all of Roger’s rudimentary knowledge of knots, plus four of his less-cherished scarves. He wanted to use rope before he remembered he didn’t have any, though it’s probably for the best. The last thing he wanted was to cut off circulation to the guy’s slightly callused and very lovely hands. There’s a simple gold wedding band sitting on his left ring finger. Somebody’s waiting for him back home, then. They probably wouldn’t be happy if Roger returned him with one hand missing.

It's easily half an hour before the visitor opens his eyes. During that time Roger is able to sharpen seven knives, demolish a ham sandwich and break a mug.

That last part was unintentional.

He’s just finished cleaning up the shards when the stranger’s eyes flicker open. He lets out a groan in the process, twitching against his bonds. When his eyes finally focus his expression shifts from befuddlement to severe confusion.

“What...” he murmurs, then winces.

Roger frowns. “What is this, then? Rescue or kidnap?”

“What?”

“Are you here to rescue me or kidnap me?” He repeats, tightening his grip on the coffee pot.

The man’s eyes narrow in a frown. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Answer my question.”

“Answer mine. Hell, I have a whole list of questions for you to answer.”

Roger considers him—the long brown hair, the porcelain skin, the irritated slant to his full lips. He’s beautiful in an understated sort of way, but no way does that mean Roger would forget a face like his. “Have we met?” he ventures.

The man’s face shifts imperceptibly in a way Roger can't read. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, who are you?”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don't. What are you, deaf?”

“You don’t recognize me at all?”

“Mate, I've been living here all my life. The number of people I've met is pretty limited. Believe me. If I'd come across you I'd remember it.” And not just because of his looks, though Roger decides not to point that part out.

The man looks down finally. He seems disappointed and Roger has the urge suddenly to do anything to make it better. It takes him by surprise. He could give him anything if it would make him happy again, which, _what the fuck._ Before he can examine that thought too closely the stranger’s eyes are flicking up again. “I’m not here to rescue you or kidnap you. It’s a coincidence that I’m here at all. I was looking for something.”

“Prove it,” Roger replies flatly.

“Um—well, I was here to steal a crown.” He looks around, confused. “Where’s the crown?”

“I've hid it,” Roger exclaims proudly.

“Why?”

“I figured it would come in handy.”

The man looks around. “It's in that cupboard, isn't it?”

“So fucking what if it is? Not like you can reach it with your arms tied. Now why were you looking for it?”

“I’m a thief. That’s all. Alright?”

Roger frowns. “Thief?”

“Yeah.”

That doesn’t seem right. Something about it doesn’t fit, though Roger can’t put his finger on it. “You’re a thief. That’s why you have the crown.”

“That’s all.” He looks at Roger intently, grey eyes sharp. “My friend is sick and we have no money. We need either a good doctor or a miracle, and both of those are expensive.”

It makes perfect sense. Why is it making his head spin?

The man looks up at him, eyes earnest and sad.

“What happened to your friend?” he asks him.

“He got sick a few months ago. It keeps getting worse. He’s bedridden most days now.” The guy licks his lips. “You can come back with me if you want.”

“Why would I want that?”

“You can’t seriously like living here all by yourself.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Why did you think I might be coming to rescue you? That kind of implies that you think you need to be rescued in the first place.”

Roger glares at him. He’s not wrong. “I can leave if I want to.”

“Then why haven’t you? You clearly want to. It’s better than being a prisoner. Don’t you want to break free of all this?”

Roger looks around the tower; the dark corners, stuffy furniture and tiny window. “Why would I go with you? How do I know I can trust you?” he asks instead, because that other question isn’t something he wants to delve into right now.

“You have the crown. Take it as a sign of good faith, I guess. Collateral.”

“I’m supposed to take my own crown as collateral?”

“What?” the man asks, squinting at him again.

“It’s my crown.” At the man’s blank look he rolls his eyes. “I’m the fucking _prince._ ”

Now the man looks even more confused. “No you’re not.”

“Am so. Crown Prince Roger of Rhye.”

“No you’re _not_.”

“I think I know who I am better than you do.”

“There isn’t any prince. The king and queen never had any children.”

Roger spreads his arms sarcastically, raising his eyebrows. The guy huffs a laugh.

“How come I’ve never heard of you?”

“It’s a secret. They don’t want people to know about me so I don’t get kidnapped.”

“How’s that worked?”

“Great, evidently. You just came to steal shit and you don’t even know who I am, so I’d say that plan was foolproof.”

The man just stares at him blankly for a long moment. “Right,” he says. “Okay. Well, now that we have all that sorted out I suppose you should let me go. Then we can both get out of here and go our separate ways.”

It’s a gambit, and Roger knows it. It's something about the way his hands twitch against his bonds, maybe. The restless movement of his wrists. Roger doesn't know. He's only known the man a half hour, but already he can read him like a book. He’s calling Roger’s bluff when Roger didn’t even know he was bluffing in the first place.

That's what makes his instinct to trust him anyway even more confusing.

“What's your name?” He snaps. “You know mine. Only right I should know yours.”

The man swallows hard. “John,” he gets out.

“Where are you going after this, John?”

“To meet up with a friend. If you come with me I’ll introduce you. You’ll like him,” he adds, eyes hopeful.

“That sounds a little like forced gang initiation.”

“I asked, didn’t I?” John says, offended. “Would you rather be turned loose into the wilderness?”

“You aren't making a good case for yourself here. Why don’t I just stay here with my family?”

“With your family?” John asks. “And where are they, exactly? Down in the throne room while you stay up here all alone in your tower?”

Roger frowns. “It’s for my protection.”

John sighs again, frustrated. “Aren’t you bored?”

“You don’t know shit about me, mate.”

“I know you have a gut feeling about this right now. I know something in you is telling you what you need to do.” He licks his lips. “Roger, I think you should trust that instinct.

He kind of hates himself for letting that be what wins him over.

 

“Can we go now?” John asks him for the umpteenth time.

“Give me a minute, will you?” Roger hikes his bag further up his shoulder. It’s already starting to weigh him down, but he’d only packed the essentials: all the money he could find, some snacks and a few other odds and ends he thought might come in handy. The damned crown is weighing him down the most.

“It’s been thirty.”

“Well excuse me if this is a bit special. It’s my first time outside the castle, you know.”

John gives him an unreadable look. “It can’t be.”

“How the fuck would you know?” Roger snaps, though in all fairness the grass beneath his feet feels a little too familiar for his comfort.

“Look at your hair,” John replies levelly. “How’d you get those highlights if you never go outside?”

“I was born with ‘em,” he replies, shrugging.

“You were not.”

“Was so. I was born with a gift. Makes my hair gold.”

“What kind of gift?” John asks slowly.

Shit. “Nothing.”

“Roger.”

“It doesn’t matter, okay?” He whips the coffee pot out of his bag and brandishes it threateningly. “Quit asking!”

“You brought that?”

“Of course I brought it!” He huffs, turning finally to start down the path with John at his side. “Where are we going, anyway?”

John sighs. “The next town over. It isn’t far. There’s a decent pub there.”

“How far?”

“A few hours by foot. I hope those shoes are comfortable.”

Roger looks down at the soft purple leather of his boots. They aren’t exactly walking shoes, but then it’s not like he walks all that much anyway given where he lives. He shrugs and looks up instead.

The sky is different from down here, or maybe that’s just what he wants to think. It’s lovely and bright, though, inviting and warm through the spaces between the trees in a way it had never been from the tower. Up there it had only ever looked cold and dead—dreamy, but cold. He gets lost staring at it for longer than he’d like to admit. The castle is a mere speck in the distance by the time an unbidden thought snaps him out of it.

_Does it ever make you feel lonely?_

_Not when I’m with you._

He frowns. It feels as alien in his brain as the stars look at night, a distant echo of a memory of a dream.

John snorts as he stumbles over a root. “Keep up,” he says simply.

Roger scowls and takes his advice, and they walk silently for several long minutes. “Who’s the girl?” he says finally, if only for something to break the silence.

“What?”

“Your ring. I saw it as I was tying you to that chair.” John shoots him a look. “Or is that not a wedding band? If you’re single all you have to do is say, you know,” he adds with a saucy wink.

John looks away quickly, cheeks flaming. “Never been out of the tower, huh?”

“I read,” he squawks indignantly.

“Do you?”

“Yes!” Or he thinks he does. Can’t remember any titles specifically, but there must’ve been a raunchy romance novel thrown into the mix if his inner monologue every time his travel companion thoughtfully bites his lip is any indication. “So what is it? Married? Not married? What?”

“It’s complicated.”

“How is that complicated? It’s just a yes or no. Are you engaged?”

“Kind of.”

Roger shoots him a skeptical look, but that seems to be all the other man is willing to say on the matter. “Who is she, then?” he tries instead.

“Not a she.”

“He, then. Nice. Nothing wrong with that.”

The look he gets this time is as skeptical as it is amused. It makes his eyes all twinkly.

Roger narrowly avoids letting out a dreamy sigh before composing himself. Married. Right. “Tell me about him.”

John looks away. “Maybe later.”

“Why not now?”

“I don’t know you that well.”

“So? This will help us get to know each other.”

“Later, Roger.”

Roger huffs, put out. “What do you want to talk about then, if you’re so picky?”

John huffs. “I don’t know. Tell me about the tower.”

“I’m not sure what you want to know,” Roger answers uncertainly.

He’s silent for a minute, long enough that Roger almost forgets the question entirely as he dodges the roots tangling through the forest floor. “Why there?” he asks finally. “Why you? Why’d they do that to their son?”

“We’ve already talked about this.”

“Not really,” he insists. “They wanted to protect you. They didn’t have to lock you up like that.”

“You don’t know them,” Roger says testily. “You don’t know me. We literally just met, okay? Don’t push it.”

John falls resolutely into a stony silence once more. It stretches the minutes as they walk again, leaving nothing but the path and the thoughts bouncing around his brain to make the time go faster. He thinks of the tower, probably silent without him. The eeriness of the thought makes him shiver. He wonders if they’d noticed his absence yet. No one comes to him on Wednesdays, not even his tutors. His parents are almost never there except to track his progress.

God, it’s been lonely.

He glances at John’s profile quickly before fixing his eyes on the path again. “They had me up there for training, alright? Education. It was easier to remain isolated so I could focus better.”

John’s eyes flick up to him. “Training?”

“Yeah. Training.” He offers nothing else and John doesn’t ask, taking the silent cue.

The trees are breaking in front of them, and sure enough there’s a town visible a short distance away. Actually, town is probably too generous a word. All Roger can really see are the docks, a few warehouses and a rather seedy-looking tavern.

A handful of men sit outside on overturned barrels, black spots against the doorway in dark leather that’s probably colored with dirt as much as it is anything else. They appear to be fiddling with some sort of pipe; the woman holding it glances up at their approach, does a double take and drops the pipe altogether. Her companions groan in dismay as whatever was inside scatters across the cobblestones.

“Hey, what the--”

“Taylor,” she gasps.

Her companions all whip around with similar reactions.

Roger frowns. “I thought you said your name was John,” he whispers accusingly.

“This is Roger, heir to the throne eternal. He’s elected to free himself from the monarchy,” John says to the crowd, ignoring Roger altogether, which, rude.  “I’m sure that’s a cause you lot can get behind.”

They meet him with dumbfounded stares. “What?” one of the men says finally.

“He just wants to be free of the regime. I’m taking him back to camp with me.” He gives them a hard look. “Freddie will vouch for him.”

They look at each other. “You’ve finally cracked, haven’t you?” the man says finally.

“I can explain it to you later, if you’re smart enough to actually listen.”

“He sure does look familiar,” the woman says.

“Maybe so.”

“So? You’re bringing home a fucking prince because of, what? A pretty face?” She steps forward, lowering her voice. “No way the others are on board with this. Do you know what they’ll fucking say?”

“I don’t see how that matters.”

The man laughs. “Of course it fucking matters, sunshine. That’s the only thing that seems to matter to you lot these days: honoring memory and all that bullshit.”

Roger frowns. “What are they talking about?”

“Cute,” the man says, turning back to John with a smirk. “It speaks. You teach it any other tricks?”

“Get out of the way,” John says quietly.

“No. I don’t know what you think is happening here, but this—” he steps forward and flicks the crest stitched into Roger’s collar “—is not gonna fly with anyone. Get this lap dog out of here before I kill him myself.”

“Excuse me?” Roger snaps, stepping forward.

John pushes him back impatiently. “I just found him. They’ve been keeping him prisoner. There’s only one logical answer here and you know it. Freddie will vouch for him,” he repeats.

“You really are the baby of the family, aren’t you? Always relying on mum.”

John’s eyes flash. “Watch it.”

“Why? In case your bitches come after me? How long is all that really gonna last? Your numbers are dwindling, _Deaky._ You all lost your spines the day your friend got sick. And look at this one,” he adds, gesturing to Roger. “If he’s really who you think he is do you think he’d be lying down taking this shit? All he fucking is,” he starts, then pauses to stab a finger into Roger’s chest.

Whatever Roger is or isn’t, no one finds out. His blood boils and his vision goes dark. When everything comes back into focus there’s an ache blooming on his knuckles. The man is on the ground, looking up at him in surprise. “Who’s laying down now? Me?” Roger spits.

“You’re gonna regret that,” the guy says, spitting blood into the grass and standing up quickly.

John gets between them quickly. “If you touch him again I will kill you,” he says plainly.

The guy hesitates, but Roger gets around John to land another blow. It’s chaos from there, fists flying and hands grappling. They hit the ground hard, the man coming down on him solidly and landing a punch to his mouth before Roger snarls and throws him off. It will heal; given his gifts it’ll be gone before this man even has time to lick his own wounds, if Roger has anything to say about it. He pulls his arm back, vision tunneling.

“That’s enough!” A voice rings out.

He freezes just long enough for the guy to kick him hard in the chest, sending him sprawling toward the door. When he looks up there is a man standing over him, looking down on him with wide brown eyes. He may be upside down, but even from here Roger can appreciate the dark fan of his eyelashes and the sharp jawline framed by soft hair. “Come here often, gorgeous?” he gets out, flashing a smile that hopefully isn’t too stained with blood.

The man’s face flashes through several emotions before landing on blind fury. “You fuckhead,” he hisses. He looks ready to throw a punch himself now, and Roger gulps. “You absolute piece of shit.”

For the second time that day John comes to the rescue, pushing him gently away with a hand on his chest. He whispers rapidly into the man’s ear, too low for Roger to hear.

“This isn’t over,” his attacker shouts from where he’s still laying a few feet away. “You think they’re gonna protect you forever? You’re monarchy. To us you’re already dead.”

“Fuck you,” Roger gripes, dabbing at his split lip with the back of his hand. Already he can feel it start to tingle and warm, and he covers it with his palm quickly.

“Fuck you!”

“Stop it,” the man in the doorway calls impatiently. John is standing a step in front of him now, ready to jump into action. “Simon, whatever’s happening here doesn’t concern you. Keep to yourselves and we’ll do the same.”

“My name’s Sid!”

The man rolls his eyes, holding out a hand. Roger takes it and drags himself up, then holds on for what is probably a little bit longer than acceptable. The man meets his eyes with something between wonder and shock and gives his fingers a squeeze.

“We don’t really care,” John is calling to the men behind them.

“Maybe you should. You aren’t the biggest fish in the pond anymore. Everyone’s saying you’re old news.”

“At least they talk about us. For the life of me, I can’t think of anyone who’s even heard of you.”

“Are you alright?” the man in front of him asks quietly. His voice is smooth and sweet and Roger would happily listen to it for possibly forever.

“What?” he replies.

Wordlessly the man tries to tug the fingers blocking Roger’s wound away, but Roger refuses to budge. “We should tend to that.”

“It’ll heal on its own. Don’t worry about it.” He can feel it already, the flesh slowly starting to knit back together.

John gives them both a gentle prod. “Let’s get inside, alright?”

“Fuck you, Deacon!” Sid yells after them.

“Yeah, fuck you too.”

“John, come on,” the man says, dragging them both inside. They pass the main room entirely, heading straight for the kitchen where the man starts rifling through cabinets.

Roger watches him warily. “Are you Freddie?”

“That’s me.”

Freddie. Warm, soft, a hint of a spark. Rich and sweet, with a fierce kick. It sends a feeling he can't name rushing through his chest. _Freddie._ It suits him.

“You look flushed, darling,” Freddie says, glancing at him quickly. Finally he unearths a tin of bandages from the cabinet and holds it out to him.

Roger balks, backing away. “I don’t need it.”

“Nonsense. You’re getting blood on your sleeve.”

“No, really,” he says weakly. “I heal really fast.”

Freddie tuts. “At least let me see it. There’s no way that it’s a clean cut given how frequently those guys wash their hands.”

Roger backs away quickly when Freddie reaches to pull his hand away from his lip. He can feel the heat of the injury against his fingers. No doubt it’s quite the sight, though not in the way his companions are expecting. “Seriously, it’s okay. Alright?” he insists, tugging away.

“Roger,” John says. “Watch out, there’s some pots behind you—”

Roger doesn’t even get to look before his feet collide with them as he backs up. He reaches out his hands and manages to steady himself on the wall, pinwheeling slightly before letting out a breath.

The room is silent.

He looks between the two of them, their eyes wide and trained on his face. Sighing inwardly, he holds up his bloodstained hand and watches the golden glow reflect back on his fingers. The pain of the injury disappears as the glow grows faint and within seconds it’s gone entirely.

“What the hell was that?” John asks faintly.

Freddie is staring at him, eyes flitting between his eyes and lips, something like fear in his gaze.

“So,” Roger starts hesitantly. “Remember that gift I mentioned?”

John’s eyes snap to his.

He spreads his arms nervously. “Tada.”


	2. Chapter 2

The tavern is filled with the racket of dishes clinking and voices clamoring for attention against each other. It’s a din Roger isn’t sure quite what to think about—certainly an atmosphere he isn’t used to after all his time alone in the castle—but he doesn’t particularly mind. He looks around curiously, carefully ignoring the way his companions continue to stare at him.

It doesn’t stop them from doing it.

A waitress comes by and unceremoniously drops three mugs of beer on the table before leaving just as quickly. Roger picks his up and takes a small sip, eyes catching on a man who’s looking at him suspiciously from the other side of the room.

“Private crowd here, huh?” he asks, shooting a glare back. The man scoffs.

“You don’t exactly blend in,” John murmurs distantly, eyes still fixed on Roger’s face. “We should get you some knew clothes. You stick out like a sore thumb among all the thieves and—"

“It’s the flower, isn’t it?” Freddie blurts out.

Roger takes a breath but John gets there first. “Fred,” he murmurs.

“You saw it. Only one thing in this entire bloody kingdom looks like that, you know it’s—”

“It doesn’t make any sense. The magic doesn’t just rub off on people, or else the crown wouldn’t need it anymore,” John cuts in.

“Did anyone ever tell you how rude it is to gossip?” Roger says loudly, “or do you just not care?”

They fall silent again. Roger takes a sip of his beer.

“What happened to you?” Freddie mutters finally, under his breath and half to himself. “That’s the oldest magic in the kingdom. It isn’t supposed to transfer over like that. It isn’t supposed to be possible.”

Roger sighs. There isn’t an easy way out of this now. He knows that. Maybe he could’ve lied it off before but they know what the flower’s magic is supposed to look like. There’s no way he’ll be able to convince them it’s anything else. “Any sign,” he says in warning, “a single fucking sign that you’re going to sell me out and I contact the king immediately. You won’t last five minutes against the entire royal army.”

John looks at him in surprise. “We wouldn’t betray you. We’d never betray you.”

“Don’t act so sure,” Roger says flatly.

“Roger, we’re bandits. We’re not heartless.”

“You’re thieves, last I checked. Thieves like treasure.”

“And you’re a treasure?” Freddie asks quizzically.

“I’m serious.”

Freddie sobers quickly, looking at him expectantly.

Roger rolls his eyes and takes a few glugs of beer, and then a few more for good measure. When his mug is nearly empty and his head is spinning a little he plops the mug down and looks at them directly. “There is no flower.”

John looks at him blankly. “That can’t be true. What we just saw—”

“There isn’t one _anymore._ I’ve got all that’s left of its magic.”

Freddie blinks. “Explain.”

“When my mum was pregnant she got really sick. The kingdom magician made a potion out of the flower and gave it to her. It healed her, and when I was born I had all the remaining power the flower once had. I guess the flower lived on in me, in a way.”

“Can you use it?” he asks numbly, voice just above a murmur. “We have a friend who’s very sick. Do you think you’d be able to—”

“What did I just tell you about selling me out?” Roger snaps.

Freddie looks at him with wide, hurt eyes.

“We’re not selling you out,” John says quietly. “We never will, okay? I told you you could trust us. Nothing’s changed.”

Roger frowns at him. He shouldn’t trust them, he really shouldn’t. He shouldn’t take a single word they say at face value. He’s only known them a few hours, for fuck’s sake.

Why does he want to trust them so badly?

“We won’t make you do a single thing you don’t want to do,” John continues. “If you want to walk out of here right now you can. If you want to go back to the castle you can. All we’re asking is if you’d like to help us. Our friend is—he’s really sick. If he doesn’t get treatment soon he’s going to die.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Roger asks.

“Nobody knows. We keep bringing in new healers but no one can figure it out. There’s no medicine this far outside of the citadel, either.”

This is a bad idea. This is such a bad idea. “Where is he?” Roger asks anyway.

“Our camp is a long day’s walk east of here.”

“And you want me to come with you?”

John hesitates, then nods.

Roger looks down into the remaining dregs in his mug. He could go somewhere else. He could make his own way. The town is small but the port is big. He could sail far away, out of the king’s reach. He could have all the time he wanted to explore and only return once he’s ready.

How long could that really last?

“I get to leave whenever I want,” Roger says. “I’m free to come and go as I please. That’s a condition. It’s non-negotiable.”

John and Freddie nod.

“You tell nobody about the gift,” he continues, then licks his lips. “I don’t know if they’ve realized I’m missing yet but if they think you’ve taken me you’ll be convicted of treason. That’s a big one,” he clarifies at their blank looks.

“We know what treason is,” Freddie says. “We commit treason practically every day, darling. It comes with the territory.”

Roger rolls his eyes. “ _High_ treason. The penalty is death. If they catch up to us you run, no questions asked.”

“We aren’t just going to abandon you if they—”

“No questions asked,” he repeats, more firmly. He may not want to trust them yet but that doesn’t mean he wants to see them carried off to the gallows. The thought almost makes him sick. “Those are my terms. And there’s one last thing you should know before you agree to them.”

They look at him expectantly.

He sighs, leaning in closer. “The gift,” he starts, then shakes his head. “Ability, or whatever it is. It allows me to heal myself. They think in its weakened state the flower is devoting all its power to preserving itself first and saving others second.”

John raises his eyebrows. “So…”

“So the second part hasn’t really come to me yet,” he finishes. “I was in the tower to train to master it better so I could help my parents, but I’m still not completely sure how it works. I haven’t had much luck healing others. I’m sorry about your friend and I want to help, but I don’t know how much of a help I’ll really be.”

Freddie pulls in a slow breath before licking his lips, eyes flicking down to study the mug he still hasn’t touched.

“I can promise to try,” Roger says softly, a sudden wave of guilt rising in his throat. “That’s the best I can do. If you’re alright with that then I’ll come along and I’ll do my best, but I can’t guarantee I can save him.”

He feels horrible as soon as he says it. John’s eyes are unfocused, fixed on some point far away. Freddie sniffs quickly and Roger almost feels guilty for even looking at him, for not allowing him this moment of privacy.

When he looks up his eyes are as bright and warm as they were before though, and he sends Roger a gentle smile. “Well,” he says, voice a little rough, “those sound like manageable terms to me. John?”

John starts and then nods. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”

“Good,” Roger repeats, then feels like a weight has somehow been lifted.

 

They settle at the inn above the tavern to rest for the journey ahead, the sun already a little too low in the sky and Roger and John tired after a day of trekking through the woods. It’s just as well. The moment Roger has some food in him and a pillow under his head he’s out like a light despite his alien surroundings and worry for the day ahead.

_Roger,_ a voice whispers in his ear.

He knows he’s dreaming. It’s a rare occurrence for him to be lucid like this, but he knows this isn’t real. That voice is far, far away.

_Roger, listen to me._

It’s his tutor back at the castle, Norman. Roger can only barely recognize his voice. He sounds like he’s underwater and a good distance away, words garbled and tone muffled. Something else is missing, some inherent part of his voice by which Roger had always known him. He can’t put his finger on it.

_Come home._

He sighs. He doesn’t want to come home. Restless, he rolls over in bed.

_Roger,_ the voice calls again, and then it’s all but screaming at him. _ROGER._

He snaps awake.

The sky is still dark, the barest hint of starlight illuminating his room. He can hear a whisper down the hall—not even voices but just the consonance of words as they leave lips.

He lets his feet down, toes chilling instantly against the cold floor, and creeps to the door. Silently he opens it a crack.

“Is he crazy?” Freddie’s voice hisses. “Are _you_ crazy?”

Freddie and John are standing in the hallway a few doors down, John holding a candle between them. Roger leans back quickly.

“You think it was my idea?” John hisses back. “That’s what he told me. He was born a prince and he’s lived there his whole life.”

“What made him…”

“I don’t know,” John snaps, then his voice softens. “I don’t know, okay?”

Freddie nods silently, hair shining in the light of the candle. “What are we gonna tell Bri?”

“The truth.”

“It could kill him.” When John says nothing he presses on. “The shock of it could kill him. I can’t lose him, not like this.”

“We’re gonna have to face that pretty fucking soon.”

Freddie shakes his head slowly. “We’re all together now, alright? Remember that. We just got him back. For now that’s all that matters.”

They’re silent for a long moment. Roger hovers there silently, about to sneak back to bed again when he hears Freddie murmur, nearly inaudibly, “Don’t let this get to you, alright? Don’t you make me lose you, too. I couldn’t bear it.”

Roger holds his breath as he strains to hear a reply. It doesn’t come, and a few minutes later he hears a door close. He tiptoes back to bed quickly and lays down, but it takes him a long time to fall back asleep.

 

They leave at sunrise, the path through the forest stretching long and indeterminable before him. John and Freddie seem to know the way even if there’s barely an indication of their direction through the thick canopy. They lead him sure-footed through the ferns and moss for what feels like ages, and the wet leaves staining the hems of his pants and soaking through his boots certainly aren’t helping.

“How much further?”

“Not long,” John calls.

“We’ve been walking all day!”

“Yeah, and now we’re almost done.”

Roger sighs, put out. He looks down at his shoes, the fine purple leather caked in mud. “Weren’t we gonna go shopping? ‘You stick out like a sore thumb, Roger. You need some new clothes, Roger,’” he says in an imitation of John’s accent.

Freddie huffs, turning around. “We’re in the middle of the woods. Where are we gonna find you new clothes here, hmm?”

Roger rolls his eyes. “I don’t know! Somewhere? How should I know where we are? I’ve never even left the castle.”

John turns around quickly. “Roger,” he says, pinched expression betraying his calm tone, “we’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re halfway between camp and any sign of civilization. There’s nothing around here, okay? If you want…”

Roger frowns as he trails off. “If I want what, exactly?”

John’s eyes are frozen on the trees behind them.

Roger casts a quick look at Freddie, who looks just as confused as Roger feels. He turns, following John’s gaze, and sees smoke rising above the trees. “There!” he cries triumphantly. “If there’s no sign of civilization then what’s that, then? That’s chimney smoke.”

John frowns. “That shouldn’t be there.”

“I guess you don’t know the woods as well as you think you do.”

“No,” John says. “Roger, that shouldn’t be there. There aren’t any roads for miles. This is the middle of nowhere.”

Freddie purses his lips. “They could be developing or something. Outpost, maybe.”

John looks at him flatly. “As if we don’t know this area inside and out.”

Freddie sends him a helpless look.

“We’re going,” Roger says, setting off toward the smoke.

“No we aren’t,” John tells him, jogging to catch up.

“Well, I’m going. It’s up to you whether you come.”

John’s pace falters before he falls into step with him again. “This isn’t a good idea, Rog.”

_Rog._

_Rog, beautiful._

_Baby, you’re wonderful. Roger, you are loved._

He shakes his head to clear it. Trust his imagination to start getting overactive now, of all times.

“This is the best idea,” he says. “You have no idea how badly these shoes chafe.”

“You self-heal.”

“I self-heal and then they chafe me again! It could be a shop, and if it is we’re stopping.”

“It could be anything,” he argues. “It could be the king’s army, for all you know.”

“Or it could be a sweet store with a bar in the back.” That would be ideal. He could use a beer. “You don’t have to come. I’ll bring you back a sandwich or something.”

John glares at him flatly, keeping pace. A second later Freddie catches up to walk on his other side.

They only have to walk a few steps further before a cabin comes into view between the trees. Ivy is growing elegantly over the plaster of its walls, the bricks of the walkway pleasantly mossy and aged. _ELEGANT WEARS FOR ELEGANT AFFAIRS,_ a worn carved sign above the door proclaims, and then just below it, _beer garden in back_. A few different long jackets are displayed through the paned glass windows.

Roger grins. “There we go! This is perfect.”

“This isn’t right,” John grumbles. “I’ve never seen this here in my life. It could be a trap for all you know.”

“If you haven’t seen it that’s your fault,” Roger argues. “Look at it. This is an old building. It’s been here for years.”

John scowls and looks to Freddie, eyes widening when the other man just shrugs. “You seriously don’t see a problem with this?”

“I don’t know,” Freddie says uncertainly. “We don’t come this way often. It’s possible we’ve overlooked it.”

John rolls his eyes. “This isn’t right, I’m telling you.”

“One quick look wouldn’t hurt,” Freddie says hesitantly.

“Yeah, John,” Roger chimes in, already starting to the door. “Look, you can even get a beer. Maybe that will help you loosen the stick up your—”

“Hello!” the woman behind the counter greets loudly. “Welcome to Elegant Wears for Elegant Affairs! My name is…Giselle.”

“Giselle?” Roger echoes skeptically.

The woman nods enthusiastically. “Yes. Giselle. That is my name. Is there anything in particular that I can help you with today?”

“This,” Freddie says. When Roger turns he’s holding a jacket aloft. It’s some sort of black affair with tiny yellow flowers stitched onto it, and Freddie’s cheeks are pink with excitement. “How much is this?”

“That’s two hundred crowns.”

Freddie frowns, putting it down.

“But for you,” Giselle says hurriedly, “for you it can be free! Yes, it’s free.”

John squints at her. “Just like that, huh?”

“Well, of course! We rarely get customers in here and I want to make them feel at home.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and my managers, of course,” she says smoothly.

“Won’t your managers be angry that you’re just giving clothes away when you rarely get customers as it is?”

“John,” Freddie hisses. “Don’t question it.”

Roger rolls his eyes at the two of them fondly and wanders over to a display of boots. They’re all well-made and in vibrant colors, much like the ones his wardrobe in the castle was stocked with. He picks up a pair of white ones and examines them closely.

“Where do you get your goods?” Freddie is asking Giselle as he digs through a rack of jackets.

“Oh, much of it is second-hand. People in this area always have something they’d like to sell, so we buy used clothes. Only ones in good condition, of course.”

“You can buy these off me if you’d like,” Roger says, tugging the fabric of his elaborate jacket.

“Oh? Royal silk, is it not?”

“How’d you know?”

“I’d know it anywhere.”

Roger shrugs. “It’s seen better days but it’s good quality. Can I trade it in?”

“Of course,” she says gleefully. “Anything you like. The changing rooms are in the back.”

She continues to chat with Freddie as John sidles up to Roger’s side, holding a pair of trousers in hand. They’re dark and heavy, much sturdier than his current ones. “Thanks,” Roger murmurs. “Sorry we dragged you along.”

“The sooner we’re out of here the better,” John mutters in reply, turning to flick through a rack of jackets before pulling one out seemingly at random. “What about this?”

“Black,” Roger frowns. “So much black.”

“You like black.”

“No I don’t!”

“You need to blend in,” John says.

Roger pouts, taking it. A moment later he spots a bright red shirt sticking out of a pile, decorated horribly with some sort of floral pattern. Holding John’s gaze he picks that up, too.

“Are you done?” John asks, sighing.

Roger glances around quickly before taking the most brightly colored boots from the rack that he can see, a horrible shade of neon blue.

“Those better not chafe.”

“None of our wears chafe!” Giselle pipes up.

“Thank you, Giselle,” Roger says graciously as John’s mouth presses into a line. “Changing rooms are in the back, yeah?”

“Yes! Only one of them is working, though. The others are out of service.”

“How does a changing room become out of service?”

“An issue with the door,” She says breezily. “You know. Sometimes there’s trouble where they don’t lock. Use the one in the back. You’ll see it.”

He doesn’t miss John’s worried frown as he heads to the back of the store. There’s a dark corridor there, stalls on either side. All of them bear signs proclaiming them out of service except for the one straight back, the furthest from the lamp light. He hesitates and then scoffs at himself, walking quickly up to it and closing the door behind himself. He changes quickly, the feeling of the coarser fabric already sitting more rightly than the fine silks he’s used to. He grins, spinning around to look for a mirror.

It takes a minute longer to find one than he’d expect. It doesn’t immediately stand out, looming in the corner but covered in a heavy curtain as it is. He grips the cloth and tugs it down until it pools on the floor and then freezes.

His own reflection isn’t looking back.

The glass looks straight into a room like it were simply a window, but Roger knows that’s impossible. He’s looking into a place miles away, the cramped space he used to live in at the top of the tower. Things have been tidied as if they were torn apart and then meticulously put back together, but there’s a greater change he can’t quite put his finger on. It looks colder somehow, like all the happiness has been drained from it. He isn’t sure why. Outwardly hardly anything is different.

He yelps as a man steps into the frame.

“Hush!” the man hisses. “Keep your voice down. I just want to talk.”

Roger squints at him for a moment before he even recognizes Norman. Again, something is different—some warmth is lacking, some internal spark has been put out. He can’t comprehend it. “What are you doing here?” he asks instead. “What the fuck are you doing in a mirror?”

“Relax, Roger,” he says soothingly, though his voice doesn’t calm Roger the way he knows it used to. “It’s alright. This is just a projection. We’ve been scouting for you since you left but I couldn’t intercept you quickly enough. I tried to reach out to you last night but it didn’t work.”

“I had a dream,” Roger mutters, and Norman nods.

“You’re too far away for me to communicate with you like that. We’ll have to make do with this until you can come home.”

“Come home?” Roger asks skeptically.

“Yes, come back to us. Follow the sun east. You know the way.”

Roger shakes his head numbly.

“Roger, don’t be a fool. You don’t belong out there.”

“I think I can decide that for myself.”

“Can you?” he asks, voice cloyingly sweet. That’s familiar, at least. “You’ve fallen into every trap we warned you about. These people you travel with don’t care about you. They just want to use you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I’ve been watching. What do you think will happen once they realize what you are? Do you think they’ll just let you go?”

He has to think about that one—really think about it, because his first instinct is that Freddie and John won’t hurt him. He knows that deep in his bones in a way he hasn’t been sure about something in a very long time. They don’t want to do him any harm.

Then he has to think about why. How does he know? Why is he so sure? His memories of home feel like they’re slipping through his fingers like fish in a stream. How can he trust anything that comes from his own frazzled mind?

How can he trust anyone?

“They’re only going to hurt you, Roger.”

“Yeah, well,” Roger mutters. “It’s better than being locked up all day.”

Norman huffs. “Don’t go any further west. Listen to me. Stay where you are and we’ll come find you. We’ll take care of the bandits and bring you home.”

“Take care of them?”

“They have to answer for their crimes just like you need to return to the castle. Everyone must be put in their proper place, and yours is here.”

That’s not right. That’s not right. _That’s not right._

“Stay put. We have a cohort nearby. They’ll be there soon and you can—”

Roger leaps up, running out of the changing room at full speed. He whips down the narrow corridor and into the shop. “Guys, we need to go _now._ ”

“You can’t leave!” Giselle shrieks. “There are some people on their way! They love to meet new travelers!”

“How much did they pay you?” John asks her.

Giselle says nothing, eyes wide and scared.

“How much?” he snaps louder.

“John,” Freddie says, tugging at his sleeve.

“Two hundred crowns a head,” she mumbles. “Just a simple illusion to lure you here. Please, I needed the money. I’m from a witches’ colony in the far north. There’s been nothing to eat, no medicine and people are getting sick—”

“John, we need to go,” Roger says. Freddie looks at him with scared eyes.

John swears under his breath. He digs around in his bag until he unearths a small sack. It tinkles when it hits the counter. “That’s seven hundred. If they find out you failed they’ll kill you. Not a word. You understand?”

She nods, eyes watering.

“John!” Freddie snaps.

He tugs frantically at John’s jacket again and Roger drags at Freddie’s arm and between the three of them they’re hurling to the door and out into the woods.

Roger takes a look at the sky, at the moss on the trees, at the way the ferns reach to the sun—how does he know this, he shouldn’t know this—and orients them west before sprinting ahead. He doesn’t need to look to know the others are right behind him, matching him step for step. “The army’s coming,” he gasps. “They’re looking for me. They know.”

“How far out?” Freddie pants.

Roger just shakes his head. There’s no way to know.

“Fuck. Camp is still a ways out—”

“How far?”

“Too far.”

“The hollow,” John says from the rear. “Up ahead—”

“That’s risky,” Freddie says.

“Last place they’ll look,” John replies. “We’re out of options.”

Freddie frowns but pulls ahead to the front, leading Roger through the underbrush and checking once to see that he’s still following. He weaves under a tree branch before falling into an overgrown path. It looks like it was once maintained, maybe even graveled over. Now it’s just a barely-visible divot in the greenery of the forest.

How long they run he isn’t quite sure. All he knows is the burn in his lungs and the dizzy ache in his skull. Once or twice he hears the clatter of hooves and the din of voices yelling behind him, and that alone keeps him moving along with their breakneck pace.

Just when he feels like he can’t go on anymore Freddie lurches off the path and into an area where the trees are a little thinner, light filtering softly through the canopy. Roger can see a house in the distance, a rundown structure surrounded by a high brick wall. “There?” he gasps.

“No, this way,” Freddie says quickly, turning away from the house and diving straight into the side of the hill. Roger is following before he can stop himself, but the bush he was headed for gives way into a tiny cave just big enough to fit the three of them. John slams into his side as he scurries through last, putting a hand over Roger’s mouth. Roger is about to reprimand him when he sees the frantic look in John’s eyes.

Mere seconds later footsteps enter the clearing.

His lungs are burning but he barely dares to breathe. Freddie presses himself further back into the cave, eyes wide.

“You’re sure they went this way?” a voice says.

There’s a clanking of metal. Roger can see a pair of heavy boots beneath the leaves of the bush. He closes his eyes.

“I thought so.”

“Fuck. This is a fucking goose chase if ever there was one. They’re probably hiding at the shop somewhere.”

“You don’t want to check the house?”

“They wouldn’t go in there. Don’t be fucking stupid. _I_ don’t want to go in there. It’s creepy as hell.”

The metal continues to clank as the soldiers wander away.

They sit there silently for one minute, for five, for ten. It’s long enough that his breath has calmed again, sweat cooling on the back of his neck. John finally drops his hand and he relaxes, letting their warmth sink into his arms where they’re pressed into him.

“Where the hell are we?” he asks.

“Old hiding place. I think we lost them,” John murmurs.

Freddie gets on his hands and knees shakily, crawling to the entrance and peering out before hesitantly standing up outside. “They’re gone, or at least they are for now. Fuck, John, I know you have a bleeding heart but did you really need to give her all that money? We’ve barely got anything left as it is. We won’t be able to afford paying Tim now.”

“She could have stopped us from leaving, Fred,” John replies tiredly. “We’re no help to anyone if we’re killed.”

Roger follows him out. He stretches minutely and looks around, eyes catching on the house in the distance yet again. Somehow the sun doesn’t touch it the way he knows it should; it looks cold and decrepit, a sad husk of something that was once alive.

“Come on,” Freddie says. “It isn’t far now. The army will still be looking, but if we move fast they won’t be able to catch up. We’ll be safe once we get to camp.”

Roger tears his eyes away from the dark windows of the house, eyes locking with John’s for a moment. He’s as inscrutable as always, looking briefly away and then turning to follow Roger’s line of sight to the house. Roger studies him for a minute: the errant leaf stuck in his hair, the downturn of his mouth and the haunting melancholy in his eyes. He looks suddenly very young.

Roger turns away and silently follows Freddie out of the clearing and back toward the path. After a beat he hears John’s footsteps follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented. Really means a lot!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for brief self-harm for the sake of blood magic. It's in the last section!

The camp is so well hidden Roger almost misses it.

Something about the way the trees conceal the clearing, something about the way the underbrush tangles together thick and uninviting, makes Roger’s eyes nearly slide over the area entirely before Freddie tugs gently at his sleeve and leads him between the bushes. Trinkets hanging in the branches clink as they walk through, and Roger looks up to see more of them dangling from the high branches of the trees—chains of glass beads of little value that appeal to his sense of color all the same swaying and clinking together in the breeze. The underbrush gives way to a glen of bright green moss and rich red soil. A handful of canvas-sided tents are set up in a semicircle around a fire pit. Off to one side is a cart laden with sacks of food. Three horses are tied up to a tree. A river runs clear and cool just beyond.

“Fred?” someone calls softly.

Freddie curses and rushes to a figure standing before one of the huts closer to the fire. Roger strains to see his face, but all he can make out is a mess of curls and layers of soft blankets draped around a set of shoulders. “You should be sleeping, darling,” he hears Freddie say, and then bends their heads closer as he leads the man back into the hut.

“Boyfriend?” Roger ventures, turning to John.

John just looks at him with those same sad eyes before wandering toward the fire. “The one over there is empty. Go ahead and make yourself at home.”

Roger shakes his head and goes to the hut. When he throws the canvas of the door aside it’s to see a pile of blankets on a thin mattress. He drops his bag on top of it, checking the crown quickly for any dings or dents. It’s unharmed; so is the coffee pot, miraculously. Roger gives it a quick polish before walking back to the fire.

John has been joined by another man who looks up at Roger’s approach, eyes going wide. “Alright, mate?” he asks hesitantly. “Good to see you.”

Roger frowns, taking a seat. “Do we know each other?”

“Meet you, I meant. It’s good to meet you.”

“Tim’s a sorcerer from out east,” John says. “He’s been holding down camp while we were away.”

“Oh,” Roger says, frowning. “Are you the healer?”

“Kind of,” Tim shrugs. “I’m doing my best. Sorry, John.”

“Don’t apologize,” John says. “That’s all we could ask for. I should be the one who’s sorry. We won’t be able to pay you in full until next week.”

Tim waves him off. “Shit happens out here. I get it. Don’t worry about it, alright? I’ve got more work lined up this week, anyway. I’ll be fine.”

“Work?”

“Yeah, some patch-ups in the far east. Sid’s crew always need some bandaging up for whatever reason and I happen to be a man with bandages. I should probably get out of your hair.”

John frowns. “Stay for a little while. We haven’t had time to catch up. I had some questions for you, anyway.”

“Questions?”

“Yeah, some magic stuff,” John says, shooting Roger a surreptitious glance.

“Do you two need some space?” Roger asks. “I’m here for a reason. I can go have at it, if you’d like.”

Freddie appears behind him then, smoothing a hand over Roger’s shoulder. “What’s this?”

“Did you want me to try…” he starts, then trails off at Tim’s curious glance. He may be willing to reveal his gift to a couple of bandits he’s known for mere minutes, but he’s loathe to give that information to this stranger.

“Oh. No, we’ve only just gotten back,” Freddie says distantly. “You should rest up. You have to be at your best, after all.”

“If I can’t do it I can’t do it. I might as well try now.”

“Roger,” Freddie says, smiling softly. “Take some time for yourself, alright? You must be tired.”

Now that he mentions it, his feet are a little sore. Something about muscle aches never seems to heal quite right. That always takes a little time. “I suppose I could use a nap,” he relents.

“Go rest up. We’ll wake you for dinner.”

“Promise?”

“We promise.”

 

Despite himself he falls asleep nearly as soon as he lies down in the pile of blankets on the floor of his hut.

He feels comfortable around his travel companions—achingly comfortable, more so than he’s felt with anyone in his whole life—but he doesn’t quite want to trust them yet. Something feels off, and their reluctance to let him do his job isn’t helping. Nonetheless something about the smell of the woods and the quilts below him saturates his brain, leaving him drunk on a contentedness he doesn’t quite understand but is content simply to drift through. It has him asleep in the span of seconds.

And he dreams.

His dreams swirl in shades of gold and hazel. _Rog,_ a voice murmurs in his ear, soft and delicate. _Roger? Where did you go?_

He sees dust motes swirling before a window. He sees sheets swirled on a bed. The air smells dark and hot like earth and salt, humid as he pants it in, the blankets soft against his skin. Someone is panting into his neck. His mouth tastes brine.

_Rog,_ the voice whispers again.

The dream changes.

The smell of earth is still thickening the air around him but this time comes with rainfall, stones slick beneath his feet as he makes his way through the undergrowth. His shoes are worn and fit like a second skin. His jacket is dark and fits like a second skin. The sky is dark and purple like a bruise. His chest hurts. He’s running.

The dream changes.

_Roger,_ a voice snaps.

It’s Norman, his tutor at the tower. He’d know his voice anywhere, has known it since he was a child.

_Roger, this isn’t difficult. If you can do it this easily why can’t you do it to someone else?_

Roger looks down at the blood pooling on his palm. He looks down at the knife in Norman’s hand. He looks at the glow flooding from the cut, knitting the skin back together. He feels nothing.

The dream changes.

The air is acrid; the air is choking him. He’s standing on a tall hill, the top of it cleared of trees to form a great pyre of logs stacked into a giant x. The wind is only fanning the flames, making them roar and forcing them taller as the smoke spirals into the sky in a great cyclone. He stands a distance away, his brothers at his side, but even from here the heat pinches the skin of his face. He tips his head back to watch the smoke and smiles.

The dream changes.

The world is dark and warm and muffled. Someone presses a kiss to the middle of his palm.

_You’re going to change the world,_ a voice whispers.

He snaps awake.

Sometime during his slumber the sun had set, leaving the forest in shades of black and blue. The fire’s glow is illuminating the canvas of the hut even from here, casting its interior in a comforting warm glow. He sits up slowly, running a hand through the tousled mess of his hair.

“—wear away with proximity then why hasn’t it done so yet?” someone murmurs.

He sits up straighter, straining to hear it. The voices are nearly drowned out by the crackle of the fire, but if he listens close enough…

“This kind of magic can be volatile,” Tim replies. “The kingdom’s magician is strong, but there’s a good chance that the further from the castle he gets the weaker the spell will be. With this type of curse it’s always hard to tell.”

“So we’re relying on triggers now?” John says quietly.

“I wouldn’t try to trigger it. Again, it’s volatile. You did right not to let anything slip. If you try to fight it directly it could get worse or try to self-destruct the host.”

“You mean…”

“Yeah.” They’re silent for a minute and Roger stands, shoving his shoes into his feet. “Your best bet is to let it run its course. There’s no way to predict this. It’s all up to him, really.”

Roger opens the door of the hut and steps out, pacing toward the fire.

“Magic like that is always unpredictable, but—” Tim starts, then goes silent as he sees Roger approach.

Roger pauses, frowning. “What are you guys talking about?”

Tim blinks. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Just the intricacies of some magic that’s been going around,” Freddie says smoothly. “Curses and such. You know. Would you like some stew?”

Roger sits down warily, accepting the bowl that’s put into his hands. He cranes his neck to catch Freddie’s eye. Freddie just smiles at him warmly when he does. He looks to the others, but they both studiously avoid his eye.

Tim swallows uncomfortably before standing. “Well, I should be off. I’ve abused your hospitality enough.”

“Oh, it was no trouble—” Freddie starts.

“We love seeing you,” John gets in.

“It’s just such a long journey, you know,” Tim says graciously.

“Of course,” Freddie gushes. “I’ll see you out.”

“Thank you. Goodbye, John. Goodbye, Roger. Nice to meet you.”

Roger raises his spoon in acknowledgement, watching them head toward the edge of camp. Finally he nudges his shoulder against John’s. “What’s all that about?” he asks.

John’s head snaps up. “What?”

“The curses,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“What curses?”

“The ones you were just talking about,” Roger says flatly.

“Oh. Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it isn’t anything you need to worry about. There’s been some unrest in the far north recently. Well, there’s been unrest everywhere. The northern covens tend to be trickling down into other regions to work for pay, though.”

“Like the girl in the shop today.”

“Yeah, like that. Everyone has to do something to get by these days.”

“Like you guys?”

“What?”

Roger shrugs. “You’re criminals, aren’t you? Thieves?”

“I suppose, yeah,” John says carefully. He fiddles with his hands as he speaks, and Roger’s eyes catch on the movement. Nervous tic, maybe. Somehow it’s hopelessly endearing. “Sometimes we need things the state can’t give us. This kingdom hasn’t been kind to everyone and we have to make do.”

“You could leave,” Roger grumbles. There may not be much love lost between him and his parents, but there’s love nonetheless. Or there was. It’s all getting twisted in his head the further he gets from the castle.

“We can’t leave,” John replies, bringing him out of his thoughts. He scoots over as Freddie returns to the fire and allows him a space beside him. They share an amused look as he smiles wryly, voice almost mocking as if he’s quoting someone. “We have to fight from the inside if we want to change anything. Attack from the rear.”

“In order to what?” Roger asks skeptically, and John’s smile fades. “To undermine the throne?”

John looks to Freddie uneasily. “Something like that.”

“There are a lot of people upset with the way things are,” Freddie pipes up. “A lot of people don’t have homes. There’s no food, no medicine. People sometimes get creative to get by, and there are others…”

“Looking for a more permanent change,” Roger guesses. He supposes he should feel more upset about this. It’s his family, after all. It shouldn’t feel right that they fall. He shouldn’t be able to turn his back on them after a lifetime of good memories. He wracks his brain for any good memory of them at all, but the best he can come up with is a hazy memory of running through the castle with them as a child. He knows they were around, though. He’s sure of it. Why can’t he remember? “Is that what those guys at the pub were on about?”

“Anarchists,” Freddie nods. “They want the whole system gone. They can be assholes, but I’ve been told they really do want the best for everybody.”

“Friends of yours, then?”

“Friends of a friend,” John says, fiddling with his hands again. The silence lingers.

“It’s a little extreme,” Roger ventures after a beat. “Overthrowing the whole system because times are tough? Isn’t there an easier way through?”

“Was locking you in a tower extreme?” John asks levelly, looking him in the eye.

“They didn’t lock me there.”

“So you went of your own volition?”

Roger frowns. He can’t remember why he’d moved into the tower. He can’t even remember the day it happened. Surely he should. Shouldn’t he remember something like that? The memory escapes his mind every time he tries to grasp it. “What does it matter, anyway?” he finally asks sharply.

“You can’t keep—”

“Guys, please,” Freddie says loudly. He gives John a sharp glare. “We don’t need to get into this, especially if it’s only going to make you two bicker like a couple of kids.”

“Whatever,” Roger scoffs.

The three of them sit in silence for a long moment, watching the fire crackle and spit and the light play off the trees high above them.

“I guess we might as well get some sleep,” Freddie mutters finally.

“Didn’t you want me to take a look at your friend?” Roger asks.

“You can do it in the morning. It’d be better for us all to be rested.”

Roger frowns. “I thought he was on a time-sensitive basis.”

“He is, darling,” Freddie replies, meeting his eyes. They’re big and suspiciously wet in the light of the fire, unerringly warm as always. “Trust me when I say he’ll last another night at least, though. I’d rather you be at full strength.”

“I am at full strength!”

“I’m not. Between you and me I know I’ll need all my energy the moment that boy decides to reenter the world of the living.”

John laughs softly, completely devoid of humor.

“Sound good?” Freddie asks hesitantly.

Roger sighs. “Yeah. It’s your call, anyway.”

“Alright. John?”

“Let me stay up a little later.”

“You sure?”

John nods silently, eyes back on the fire.

“Alright,” Freddie sighs. “Get some sleep eventually. No excuses for you, Rog.”

_Rog, will you grab those bags from the porch? I would but I’ve got my arms full._

“Yeah,” he says, voice sounding weak in his own ears. He frowns. “Yeah, alright.”

In all truth he could probably use more sleep, or at least it’s what he tells himself as he strips down and gets ready for bed. Maybe it will make him stop having these hallucinations finally. He’s pretty sure hearing voices isn’t considered normal.

Despite himself when he closes his eyes finally sleep doesn’t come. He has no idea how long he tosses and turns. Maybe two hours, maybe three. Distantly he hears the fire being restoked at least a dozen times. It must be well into the morning by now, but he can’t sleep.

He thinks about the miles between himself and the castle. He thinks about the empty room in the tower, cold and devoid of the life and laughter it once held.

Did it?

He’s losing his mind. There’s no other explanation.

He thinks about the room, about all that he’d done there. He lived there for years. Surely more memories should be coming back to him.

He thinks about his parents. He can picture their faces. He can hear their voices echoing in his head. He remembers his mother’s perfume and her lovely face, beauty that hadn’t aged a day past twenty-five.

Try as he might he doesn’t miss her. He can’t. The feeling just won’t come.

He remembers the room at the top of the tower again and then opens his eyes and takes in the warmth of this little canvas hut, the kind of structure bandits and squatters call home. The blankets are soft against his chin and the forest smells dark and welcoming in a visceral sort of way.

He thinks about the hut on the other side of camp. He thinks about the man inside who he has yet to meet, the man who is supposedly on the brink of death. If it hadn’t been for that one glimpse of him that Roger had had upon entering camp he’d doubt his existence at all. It’s entirely possible he’s a ruse designed to lure Roger here.

He can’t do this anymore. He can’t sit by and worry about failure, worry that he won’t be good enough. He can’t keep putting this off.

With a huff he throws the blankets off and pulls the flap aside, peering out into the camp. He can see John’s silhouette against the fire—does the man ever sleep?—but just when he’s sure he’ll have to pull some sort of stunt to sneak out of here a bird call echoes through the trees and has John’s head snapping toward the camp’s entrance. No way is it a real bird, not in the dead of night. It must be some sort of code because John stands and makes his way to the edge of the clearing.

Roger isn’t going to get a better chance than this.

He opens the flap of the hut silently, creeping around the circle until he arrives at the hut closest to the fire. The white canvas is painted with tiny gray stars. He didn’t notice that before. He opens the flap and slips inside, securing it carefully before turning.

The man he’d glimpsed earlier that day is resting on a tall pile of blankets, face glistening with sweat. He doesn’t stir as Roger comes closer and kneels beside his head and only lets out a wordless grumble when he lays a hand on his chest. Something about him is shockingly lovely and wholly familiar, even beneath the red flush and sheen of sweat on his face. Maybe something in the downturn of his mouth as he frowns in his sleep or the bump on the bridge of his nose; he can’t tell, truthfully. He doesn’t quite have time to dwell on it now, either.

He places his hand against the man’s chest, startled when it hits metal. There’s a ring resting between the layers of blankets, a simple gold band. He picks it up, puzzled to find it attached to a cord around the man’s neck. Perhaps that has something to do with the way his left arm is swollen all the way down to what were once probably very elegantly slender fingers. He clears his throat and puts the ring down again, making sure to keep it out of the way.

Carefully, he once more places a hand on his too-warm chest and squeezes his eyes shut. He reaches for the power he knows exists somewhere inside himself, growing always and always out of reach. They’d been training him since before he can remember and he draws on those lessons as best he can. Norman’s words from the previous week sneak into his head.

_To your being it is tied, and so it’s tied to your will. If it isn’t working it’s because your will isn’t strong enough. Don’t you want to be strong enough?_

_We did expect more of you, Roger._

He has to do it. There must be a way. He wants to save the man lying before him, if not for him then for his companions. No matter how hard he tries it feels his ability is slipping further and further away.

There’s really only one other option.

Laying beside the man’s head are what Roger guesses are some of his personal belongings—a tiny telescope, some sort of journal, and a dagger in a small leather sheath. It’s razor sharp when he tugs it out and gently tests it on his thumb—not sharp enough to cut from just that bit of contact, but he can tell it won’t be difficult. All it’ll be is a second of pain for him. It could make a world of difference for the man in front of him.

Before he can psych himself out of it he presses it hard into his hand, running it quickly across his palm. The knife thuds against the dirt floor as it slips through his fingers. He gasps against the pain, watching in shock as the blood wells up. He can do this, though. He can already feel the surge of power down his arm, veins lighting up gold through his fingers. The gash flares warmly, illuminating the tent. He quickly presses his palm against the middle of the man’s chest.

“Rog…” the man mumbles.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. I know this is odd. I thought I could help you, but—”

“Roger,” he says again.

He opens his eyes to find the man is watching him right back. It leaves him reeling—not the shock of that, but the look of pure love and joy on the man’s feverish face. Roger doubts he’s anything but delirious, and yet somehow he manages to meet Roger’s gaze all the same.

“You know me?” Roger asks.

“You’re an angel.” Before Roger can reply his eyes brighten, throat bobbing as he swallows hard. “I had a dream.”

“Oh?” Roger manages.

“We were travelling together. We flew all the way across the sea to a new land. Everybody loved us. And Deaks was there, and Fred.” He frowns, struggling to sit up. “Where are they?”

“Stay down,” Roger says quickly, pressing his hand harder on his chest. His own palm is warm as the magic surges through it but the man’s feels downright scalding. “They’ll be here soon, okay? Try not to move.”

“They’re coming soon?” he repeats, eyelids drooping.

Roger nods helplessly.

“They’ll be here soon. Not yet. Later, they’ll be here.”

Roger swallows. “Yeah. In a while. You gotta wait for them.”

“Are they gonna be alright without us?”

“They’ll be okay.”

“I wanted—when you died,” he starts, then stops again.

“What?”

“I needed you. I didn’t want to be alive when you weren’t. Where’d you go, Roger?”

“I’m right here,” he whispers, at a loss. The magic is tapering off, its work done. The glow is fading from the tent, still confined to Roger’s own bloodstream. It didn’t work, then; it didn’t spread. The man is no better off than he was before.

“It’s good they’re together,” the man murmurs. “They need each other. We all need each other.”

He falls asleep then, breathing shallow and rattling. At a loss, Roger tucks his curls back into place carefully and pulls his hand away.

“Roger,” someone murmurs.

He turns. Freddie is leaning through the flap of the hut, concern written all over his face. “What?” he whispers.

“Dear,” he says. “You’re crying.”

He scrubs a palm across his face, confused when it comes away wet. He didn’t realize.

“Is something the matter?”

“I don’t know,” he replies. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“You’re shaking. Come on. You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Who is he?” he asks. He looks back to where the man is once again unconscious against the blankets. He looks feverish, and Roger feels ill.

“His name’s Brian. He’s our friend, the one who’s sick.”

“No, I mean who is he really?”

“Roger, I just told you,” Freddie says, reaching for his arm. “Come on. It’s time you went back to bed.”

Roger freezes, eyes trained on the hand on his arm. On his finger is a ring identical to the one John wore—identical to the one hanging around Brian’s neck. “Just a friend, huh?”

“Come on.”

“No,” he hisses, still mindful of the man sleeping barely a meter away. “I think it’s about time you explained what’s going on here. Who are you people, and how do you all know who I am?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so short. I've been busy busy busy. But the plot is thickening so that's exciting!!
> 
> Thoughts/theories/questions? Comments are my food. That keeps me living, friends. Please offer me the food!!


	4. Chapter 4

Freddie stares at him, lost for words. It could be that Roger’s shocked him into silence or that he’s just thinking up another lie to tell. He can’t be sure, but either way it has his blood boiling.

“How do you know me?” he grits out again.

“Roger—”

“No. Enough with the excuses and enough with the kid gloves. I know you’re not telling me something.”

John slides into the doorway beside him suddenly, eyes wide. “Freddie,” he starts. His eyes flick to Brian’s face for a moment, then to Roger’s, then back to the man beside him. “We’ve got visitors.”

“Tell them to fuck off,” Roger growls. “I’m talking to him.”

“Freddie, it’s The Cross.”

Somehow Freddie looks even more shocked. “Fuck,” he hisses.

Roger glares at him. “Who the fuck is The Cross?”

“Anarchists. I’m sorry, but I need to talk to them. I’ll get them to go away. Stay here.”

“Like hell I will! This is just going to be another excuse for you to write me off. I want to know what the hell is going on, and I’m not just going to stand by while—”

“Roger, please,” Freddie says desperately. “I’m begging you.”

_“I’m begging you, don’t go to them. It’ll only get you hurt.”_

_“Just like everyone else, huh?” he grumbles. He pulls the laces on his boots tight and they whizz as they slide through the eyelets. The fabric bites into the skin of his fingers slightly as he ties the knots tight. “We’re all hurting, Fred.”_

_“Not like this, love. Money is tight and I know that, but you don’t need to join a bloody gang just to make ends meet!”_

_“It’s treason, Rog,” someone else chimes in. “If they catch you they’ll have you publicly executed. Do you get what that would do to us?” And he knows that voice, he knows the man crouching in front of him, hazel eyes warm and concerned and mouth pressed into an unhappy line as he watches Roger finish putting his boots on, he knows—_

“Roger!”

He’s fallen backward to land hard on his ass on the dirt floor of the tent. There’s a warm hand against his forehead and concerned eyes on his, a figure crouched before him.

Freddie. It’s just Freddie. John is standing a pace behind him. They’re still in the forest. Yes, that’s where they are.

“Are you alright?”

“Get off me,” Roger snaps. He tries, anyway. It comes out faint and pleading.

Freddie backs off instantly. “Will you please stay here for me?”

_“Please don’t go. Every time you leave I’m worried you won’t come back.”_

He blinks hard, trying to clear the images before him from his mind—a hardwood floor, a worn red carpet, a heavy oak door.

“It’ll only take us a moment,” Freddie says, backing away quickly before turning and hurrying further into camp. John gives him one last concerned look before following, leaving Roger alone in the tent.

At a loss Roger turns again to Brian. He takes in the softened lines of his face and the ring still glinting against his chest. He managed to avoid getting blood on it. That’s good.

“It’s not happening,” he hears Freddie say from the fire.

He wishes Brian would open his eyes again. He wishes he could talk to him, even if half the words out of his mouth are nonsense.

Somewhere an owl hoots.

He brushes a few errant curls away from his face and tugs at the power rooted somewhere in his chest again. He needs this man to live. He simply needs it.

Nothing happens.

“What the— _stop,_ ” Freddie’s voice snaps.

“Roger!” someone shouts.

Roger sits up.

“Shut the hell up,” John hisses, but the person pays no heed.

“Roger!” they shout again.

Roger crawls to the entrance of the hut quickly, sticking his head out of the canvas with his heart in his throat.

A group of men are pacing through the camp, paying no heed to Freddie and John. The light doesn’t touch them, somehow. Maybe it’s the darkness of their clothes that deflects the warm glow of the fire or maybe it’s something else. Roger isn’t sure.

“Roger?” one of the men calls, racing closer until he’s crouched in front of him. “Thank the gods. I almost didn’t believe it when Sid told us he’d seen you. Sid didn’t believe it either, from the sounds of it,” he adds with a breathless laugh.

Roger feels himself stiffen when the man pulls him into a hug, spine going rigid and arms tense at his side. The man pats his back once awkwardly before releasing him.

“You alright?”

Roger says nothing.

“We’re here to bring you home. I know things have been a bit of a mess recently but believe me when I say we’re closer than ever.”

“Hold on,” Freddie cuts in, “what makes you think he’s going with you?”

The man flicks his head dismissively, shooting Freddie a glare. “You know how important this is. For you too, not just me and him.”

“Like hell I do.”

“All the work we’ve put in these last few years—”

“I need you to stop talking about that right now,” John says firmly.

“What? Because of what Tim said? I don’t believe a word of that. Roger remembers us. How could he forget? You remember us, don’t you, Rog?”

Roger stares at him, lost for words. He takes in the wavy hair, the cocky smile slowly slipping off his face. He looks to the other men behind him; looks to Freddie and John, turns and looks back at Brian.

“He doesn’t know you,” Freddie says. “You need to accept that and move on.”

The man shakes his head minutely. “No. We need him right now. For the sake of the revolution—”

“Who gives a shit about the revolution?” Freddie snaps. “In the end you’re all going to end up bloody on the streets waiting to be executed and nothing is going to change. Don’t you get that? We already lost him. We’re about to lose Brian. Do you get how fucking futile—”

“It’s not futile. Just because you’ve given up doesn’t mean the rest of us need to also.”

“You know we didn’t just give up. You know exactly what happened.”

“Freddie, he belongs at our side.”

“I don’t belong to any of you!” Roger shouts.

The clearing goes silent. Even his own voice freezes in his throat, startled by his own outburst. He has to take a breath to center himself before speaking again.

“I don’t know who any of you people are. You owe me an explanation and you still haven’t given me one! I don’t know why I should trust a single one of you!”

Both men step back, properly cowed. Roger isn’t done yet, though. He turns to John.

“You promised me you wouldn’t sell me out,” he snaps. “How did these guys know I’m here?”

“Sid,” John says softly. “The man from back at the pub. He must’ve told people. They run in the same circles, Roger. It wasn’t us.”

“How do they know who I am? Sid didn’t know, so how do they know?”

John just shakes his head; the man still crouching before Roger looks shell-shocked. Neither of them answer.

Roger laughs, a bit unhinged. “You told me I could leave whenever I want. You said I’m free to go. If I left right now would you stop me?”

Again, nobody speaks. It’s answer enough.

“Right,” he says slowly, standing. He doesn’t look back at Brian; he can’t. “Right. I’m going back to bed. In the morning you’re going to explain everything.”

“If you want to get out of here all you need to do is say and we’ll take you with us,” says the man still crouched on the ground. His companions nod.

Roger scoffs. “No offense mate, but I’ve known you all of two minutes. What do they say about frying pans and fires?”

He pointedly ignores everyone’s hurt puppy looks and trudges back to his hut, sealing himself inside and laying down.

There’s no way they’re letting him leave tomorrow.

He wants to trust them so badly, and that’s the worst part. Nearly every single part of this journey has been defined by his heart winning out against the rational part of his brain that tells him trusting a bunch of bandits is a bad idea. He’s set it all aside, and for what?

Even now he wants to go back outside and comfort them. He wants to hold John close and tell him alright, wants to tell Freddie something that will make him laugh, wants to hold Brian’s hand even if he can’t feel it. Hell, even the new residents of the camp for all their oddities are more appealing than the people he knew in the citadel.

None of it makes any sense.

He’s done being pushed around like this. He’s done being sold out, done being kept in the dark. If they won’t be letting him leave tomorrow then he’ll just have to leave tonight.

He scrubs a hand over his face before pulling his bag closer. There’s still some food in there. His coffee pot remains unharmed. The crown is glittering at the bottom even in the low light. He has more than enough supplies to get him home.

Where’s home?

There’s supposed to be a compass in your heart pointing you back to a single place, he’s told. His isn’t pointing him to the castle. He doesn’t know where it’s leading him, but he can’t return to the citadel. Not yet.

He sniffles once then simply sits still, watching the silhouettes of people move across the canvas of the tent. Again he finds himself waiting until all is still and quiet. He strains to hear any sound other than the crackle of logs and the movement of the trees.

Eventually all is still. He peeks out of the doorway again only to see the four men that make up The Cross sprawled on blankets around the fire. Again John has foregone sleep and Freddie appears to have joined him this time, but there’s a lantern on in the hut where Brian rests and Roger can see two silhouettes inside.

He stands silently and throws his bag over his shoulder, hesitating for a moment before taking the crown out. He traces over the fine bands of white gold, black diamonds glinting darkly in the firelight. It’d never particularly appealed to his sense of taste, not that he’d ever tell his parents that he didn’t find the heirloom fashionable. They’d finally showed it to him a mere month ago, telling him it’d been in the family for centuries as they waited for a crown prince to be born. He’s never worn it. He never attends public events so there’s never been the need.

He’s never going to wear it, either.

He sets it carefully in the middle of the mattress. He won’t be able to say goodbye to any of them, won’t even be able to get a last look at them. He hates his travel companions more than he can say, but he knows he’ll miss them terribly—even Brian who he’d only shared a handful of words with, Brian who had looked at him with such shameless love and devotion. Maybe they sold him out and maybe they didn’t, but either way he doesn’t wish any tragedy on them. The least he can do is leave them the bloody lump of stones and pomp so they can buy some proper medicine.

He steps out of the hut, treading carefully across the soft soil of the camp. The men around the fire are snoring deeply and he can faintly make out Freddie’s voice as he and John talk amongst themselves. He furiously tamps down the need to go back to bed, to wait until morning or even try to steal a last glance at them, but he can’t.

He does pause to cast one lingering look at their visitors, shrouded in black leather and curled up like a pile of puppies. Something stirs in his chest, something hesitantly familiar. He turns away before it can properly stretch its wings, hurrying to the entrance of the camp and slipping through.

The trinkets hanging from the trees tinkle in his wake as he walks out into the darkness. He takes a deep breath, letting his feet fall into the path to the unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very short and so was the last one and that's totally not because I forgot to look at my outline and realized last minute that they were actually supposed to be one chapter and not two! This is totally not an indication of how cluttered my entire life is! In a completely unrelated note, this fic is now one chapter longer.
> 
> Thanks so much for the comments/kudos guys, love ya!


	5. Chapter 5

He doesn’t remember laying down to go to sleep and he doesn’t know where he is.

The ground below his head is mud and dead leaves. The surface in front of him is rock. The air around him is the thick and musty smell of forest and decay, of soil teeming with life. It’s dark. He reaches out to trace the cold sheet of rock gently and tries to peace it together.

He remembers leaving the camp. He’d begun his walk east. He could measure the passing of time easily, measure it by his breaths and footfalls and the dropping dewpoint.

Then his mind grew foggy and time wasn’t a sure thing anymore.

It was a gradual slip of focus or maybe of consciousness, and truthfully he couldn’t say whether he was awake or dreaming. The thought occurred to him that it might not be real. He might have even been in the tower asleep in his bed, the entire journey just a figment of his sleep-addled mind. The moon was still high in the sky but his mind was floating aimlessly through the stars, neutrally buoyant in the abyss. The underbrush whispered as creatures of the moon scurried through it, the forest giving off a murmur that he couldn’t understand. The trees stretched up into the sky like great monsters, up and up and up.

He was so busy looking up that he’d tripped on a root. He got up and kept going.

His head didn’t feel right. He remembers philosophizing about it in a drunken sort of way: it could’ve been his brain floating in the underground sea of his memories that was throwing everything off-kilter. He was dizzy in a way that signaled bad things and too out of it to give it much thought or concern. He should have been worried, he knows. There’s a possibility he should still be worried. He should be, but he isn’t now and he wasn’t then.

Maybe he was sick. Maybe whatever evil thing that had been raging through Brian’s blood had been passed on to him. He remembers wondering distantly if he was going to die, too.

He remembers needing to get home. He remembers the thought distinctly: I need to get home.

Where the fuck is home?

Where is _he?_

He knows how to navigate by the stars, but when he’d looked up they were all moving far quicker across the sky than they should have been. They’d raced around each other like fireflies, the constellations rearranging every time he blinked.

Where the fuck was he?

_Do they ever make you feel lonely?_

He was warm, wrapped in blankets, sitting in the soft moss, leaning against the even softer warmth of the person beside him.

No. He was in the forest. He was walking. He was going home. He needed to get home.

Where is home?

 _Not when I’m with you,_ Brian had answered, and kissed his forehead.

No. That isn’t right. He was in the woods. That isn’t right.

He needed to go home.

He fell again, hands scraping painfully against a stone and glowing brilliantly gold. It illuminated his surroundings only briefly, and the stark light against the trees only served to disorient him even more. The sting faded and the light faded with it.

Home. He needed to go home.

The woods whispered around him. The moon burned painfully bright in the sky. He ran.

And then he remembers nothing.

He traces the rock again. He knows this. He knows this smell. He knows what he’s going to see when he rolls over. He does anyway, slowly.

The cold walls of the cave rise up around him. He reaches slowly to the leaves covering the entrance and pushes them gently aside. The sun is just barely rising on a cloudy morning, casting the world in shades of dull grey. The house looms before him, dead and cold.

He pushes himself up slowly and makes his way out into the world.

The house is as hauntingly empty as he remembers. The roof is dusted with fallen leaves. The gutters are choked with them and they pile up at the base of the wall that rises up so abruptly and unwelcomingly around the property. They rot there in damp heaps and choke the unkept path up to the heavy oak door. The bricks are dull with dirt. They should be brighter. He remembers them, scarlet in the summer sun and the gate glittering as he swung it open, someone’s laughter echoing within the house as he climbed the steps—

The echo fades away, the bricks grimy as they ever were.

He doesn't remember this. He’s only ever caught a glimpse of it. He’s never spent time here.

He can't have.

Almost in a daze, he rests his fingers against the rusting metal of the latch and swings it open. The grounds are like a forgotten dream, the grass overgrown and the trees in need of pruning. There is a pond in one corner but it’s choked with leaves and muck. Any fish that once swam there are no doubt long dead. He approaches the heavy oak of the door and finds it locked—but no, there’s a key. Yes, tucked beneath the underside of the bench. There it is.

The motion of turning it in the lock is familiar to him. A half twist, then a familiar thunk as it unlatches and swings open. He remembers that—remembers doing that with an armful of groceries, pushing it open with one hip; remembers struggling with it after one beer too many, remembers doing it quickly and all but rushing through to deliver news, remembers groping for it blindly with a soft mouth attached to his own, laughing as he tried to push them off, _let me get it open at least, or do you want to do this right here?_ He knows this.

The house is deserted. He takes in the dust on the furniture and the floor. The door hangs open behind him, leaves trailing across the worn red carpet leading down the hallway before him as they blow in from the porch. He lets his fingers drag and trace a line through the dust on the banister as he climbs the stairs slowly to the second floor.

It’s quieter up here, like a crypt.

It shouldn't be. He remembers noise, constant and deafening at times. This was a family home once. He sees it in the doors on either side of the hallway, the scuff marks on the walls and the worn carpet on the stairs. People had lived here once; a lot of people, people who cared about each other. He eyes each door as he passes. Phoebe, Joe, Crystal, Spike, little Julie; a guest room for Kash and a furnished office that Clay and Pete and Josh would haunt from time to time. He can’t connect the names with faces but he knows them all the same.

 _Do you love me?_ he hears in his head, soft and quiet with those careful vowels that always made him smile. He looks to the window seat at one end of the hall, red cushions caked with dust. He'd sat there once, warm weight on his lap, grey eyes bright in the sun and crinkled with happiness as they’d met Roger’s own. He'd rolled his eyes, tugged a lock of wavy brown hair between his fingers, whispered back, _what kind of a question is that?_

_So you do._

_You know I do._

_Show me._

The sun had been so warm that day—warm and bright, and everything had felt right and heavy in his chest, a comforting weight. Freddie and Brian would be back soon and they’d see them from the window, run down to meet them and fall back into each other again, together as they should be, as they should _always_ be—

 _Unless we burn this house down first,_ and that was Freddie, flour caked on his nose, grin on his face and gash on his hand bleeding steadily through the towel he’d held to it as he sat on the edge of the bathtub while Roger dug through their medical kit.

 _Maim ourselves is more likely. How come you're so handy with a knife in a fight but so useless with one in the kitchen?_ And he’d laughed even as Roger poured brandy carefully onto the wound, always so strong, always so happy, _his Freddie._

Following the two of them to the room at the end of the hall, and the door is sticky to open now but back then it’d been quiet on its hinges and the bed had always been rumpled and soft. Freddie had laughed and laughed but John was always single-minded focus, always assessing, who-needs-what-when-where-and-how-can-I-give-it-best, and behind him, long fingers tangled with his own, a hand on the curve of his waist, a voice whispering teasingly in his ear, Brian—

_I love you._

Brian.

_I’ve always loved you. From the first minute to the end of my life, whenever that’s going to be. The three of you are everything to me._

There’s a ring on the dresser.

_And all I want is to be able to tell you that, always. Every day. Every single day, for every day that I have. And maybe I have forever, or maybe I have tomorrow. It doesn't matter, because I have you. I have you._

Sad grey eyes all choked with tears, cheeks ruddy-red and nose running as he sniffed, _Brian, cut it out, just stop it_ , furiously blinking like he could pretend he wasn't breaking down. John had never been a graceful crier.

_Deaks._

_I wish I could hate you sometimes._

Choked laughter, snagged tooth sticking out, and now Brian was crying too, tears caught in his curls. _You don't_ , he whispered, and John choked on a sob as he slid the ring onto his finger.

_I don't. Damn you. I love you._

And there was a watery laugh from Brian’s other side then, Freddie leaning around to support his back, always careful with him as he’d grown sick and frail. _Till the end?_ He’d murmured, watching Brian slide his ring on and then taking his hand gently to do the same.

Hazel eyes looked up then, sweet and questioning. _Roger?_ he’d asked, voice rough with sickness.

He’s holding that ring now.

It’s never been worn, just like the crown sitting on the mattress back at camp. The gold band is as polished as that day he'd first seen it, heavy in his palm. He doesn't have to try it on to know it’d fit him perfectly. He doesn't have to rack his brain to know it’s a perfect match to Freddie’s, and John’s, and the one hanging around Brian’s neck.

It belongs on his finger. He loves them. It belongs with him, but he can't put it on now—not when their old house is a crypt, not when this room they'd lived in and loved in and called their own is abandoned and cold. He can't.

“I thought you'd find your way here eventually. Figured I could just wait you out.”

He whips around, ring clenched tight in his hand. “You.”

Norman sighs. “Time to come home, son.”

“I'm not your son,” he gets out. “I'm not his either, am I?”

“Don't be an idiot. Of course you are.”

He shakes his head. No, he remembers. He had parents once. Maybe they're gone and maybe they're still out there, but he had parents. And his family—his lovers—they were his world.

Norman sighs again. “I always knew this would happen.”

“You took me away, didn't you? I lived here, with them, and you just…” he looks at the ring again. It doesn't make sense. None of it does.

“I didn't take you, Roger. Don't be so childish. You left them.”

“Left them,” he repeats.

“You left them.”

No, no, no. Why would he leave them? They were everything to him; John laughing as he was dragged down between them all, Freddie blinking awake slowly every morning, Brian and his octopus limbs as he tried to hold all three of them at once in his sleep.

“You ran away. Nearly broke their hearts. They thought you were dead.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why do they think they left that here? Why do you think they left this place? It was too painful.”

“You're a fucking liar!”

“Welcome to your crypt, Roger,” he drawls, bored. “One last thing for them to remember you by. A mausoleum to your memory. You're dead to them now.”

“Shut up!” He shouts, then grabs the nearest thing and throws it. It's a pitcher, heavy and weighted. Freddie had gotten it at a market, had loved it for the way its glass glimmered like oil on water. He feels guilty when it flies wide and shatters against the wall; had it broken against its intended target it would’ve been worth it.

“Stop this,” Norman hisses. “Come home. You know where you belong. You belong with the king. You’ll learn to master your gift and you'll serve him eternal.”

Eternity. Forever. “There’s only one place I belong forever,” he grits out. “It'll never work on him. Don't you get it? I couldn’t save him if I wanted to.”

“You can and you will.”

“I _can’t_. That’s what you always told me, right? It’s tied to my will?” He steps closer. “I want him to fucking die.”

“We’ll take your memories again,” Norman snaps. “It doesn’t matter what you do or do not want. You’ll come back to the castle and keep living your pathetic life in the tower, and slowly but surely your friends will die without you unless you do the work that is required of you. If you behave we’ll save them. We could do it in the blink of an eye, you know. You have no hope otherwise.”

“That’s not happening. I won’t be able to save the king. I don’t love him.”

“Then who do you love? Them? Is that why you had so much success curing your friend at the camp?”

Fear claws up his chest. He swallows it down. “How do you know about that?”

“We’ve been following you, idiot. We’ve been following you since the beginning. You’re not going to be able to save him and you know it.”

“I won’t be saving the king, either. You know that.”

“You’ll do as your told.”

Roger grins then, and reaches into his bag. The ring gets tucked carefully into an inner pocket, and then his fingers close around a familiar handle. “Never have before,” he says conversationally. “Wasn't planning on starting now.”

In one smooth motion he pulls the coffee pot out of his bag and whips it into the side of Norman's head.

The man goes down like a bag of bricks. Trusty old coffee pot.

He runs down the steps as memories flood back to him in a rush—pressing the ring back into Brian’s hand and kissing his knuckles, _don't give this to me like it’s the end_ , and Brian had looked up at him with watery hazel eyes. _I'm going to save you, Bri. Do you hear me? I'm going to save you._

_You can't._

_I will. I'll be back. There's one thing in this kingdom that can cure anything, and I'm gonna get it for you. Look out the window tomorrow night. That's the longest it'll take._

John’s head had whipped up then, too. _Don't. They'll kill you if they catch you._

_I won't get caught, then. You told us forever. I'm not giving that up yet._

They’d shouted after him as he'd grabbed his jacket and run down the stairs, ran just like this, ran through the leaves on the porch, down the steps and across the yard to the stable, across the slippery stones and through the rain, the air sweet and earthy and human around him, his chest aching, ran and ran and ran--

“Roger!”

Just like that.

“Roger—”

But that’s not his memory. That’s real, that’s—

“Roger,” Freddie gasps, and Roger barely misses a beat before dragging him close and pressing their lips together.

Freddie gasps against his mouth, but then his lips soften and then it’s _everything_ , burning hot and familiar and electric. He smells the same, Roger knows now. Same as he always has, and he makes the same gasp-moan when Roger gets a hand in his hair, pulls him closer with the same restless fingers, skin cool and soft. He blinks when Roger pulls away, dazed.

“What—”

“I love you. I love you so much. God, how could I ever forget that?”

Freddie stares, mouth agape. “You—”

“Freddie!”

And that’s John around the corner. “Deaky,” Roger starts, then stops. He’s smiling too hard to continue.

“Roger,” John says. “We aren’t trying to sell you out, alright? We don’t care about any of that. I swear.”

“I know,” he says.

John frowns. “You know?”

“Deaks, I remember.”

His eyes go wide and then he finally seems to notice the way Roger and Freddie are still entwined, the way Freddie’s eyes are watery brown. “You remember what?” He asks in a daze, wandering closer.

“Everything,” he says, and leans into the touch when John reaches up a careful hand to trace a thumb across his cheek. “I remember everything.”

“Everything?” John whispers.

Roger nods once.

When John kisses him it’s all-consuming yet slow, gentle yet demanding, and yeah, that’s their Deaky. He tugs Roger closer when Roger fails to stifle a gasp and thumbs his jaw open, explores his mouth with a familiar hunger and control that never fails to make Roger’s head spin. He can feel Freddie clinging to his back like a limpet, face tucked into the hair falling over his shoulders. John’s hand curls around his waist and he falls into it then, lets him take over and knows nothing but the heat of his mouth, the warmth of both their bodies on either side of his, the familiarity of their smells, their tastes and touch.

 This is what he’d been missing his whole life, because he knows now that the illusion that had been his world was at a standstill without them: John, cool and collected and hiding an inner fire; Freddie, the warm stars holding them all together and setting off their light; and Brian, their moon, changeable as the tides yet stronger for it, in awe of this thing they’d created together in a way that only made Roger love them all more.

Brian.

He pulls away suddenly. “Where’s Brian?”

“At camp,” Freddie murmurs into his hair. John doesn’t quite seem to be done clinging to him either, and that’s alright. Roger isn’t sure any of them are quite ready to be done. “He’s sick. He’s getting worse. He keeps complaining about his stomach and his skin is a horrible color, Roger, it’s awful. He hasn’t been lucid in days.”

“I wasted so much fucking time,” he mutters. “How long was I gone?”

“Our anniversary was the day you left us. The fifteenth,” he clarifies. “Three months ago today.”

“Nobody blames you,” John murmurs. “You were just trying to help. It isn’t your fault.”

“It is. It is. I should have known better than to chase some fairy tale.” He remembers vividly the rush of breaking into the castle and the adrenaline spike as he plucked the flower carefully from his pot, holding it close to his chest and feeling it warm his hands like it was an animal. He thought he’d had a chance too, but then there were guards and then he was surrounded, sprawled at Norman’s feet with two dozen spears aimed at him, the damned thing still tucked inside his fist as he glared up at the man.

_We know of all the bandits outside these walls, but your little group seems to be more known in pubs than headlines. It’s pathetic, really. And here you are, their own little rebel leader. I must say, I expected more of a fight._

“Brian didn’t care,” Freddie chimes in. “I tell you, he didn’t. He knew what you’d sacrificed for him.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. He didn’t care. God, I wish I’d killed you myself for a while,” he adds with a wet laugh. “Not him, though. He only ever missed you.”

Roger swallows heavily against the lump in his throat. “And you, John?”

“You’re seriously going to ask me if I missed you when you died?” John asks him quietly. “If I was sad? Fuck you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he sighs. “That was the worst part. You’d done it for the right reasons. I couldn’t blame you. I only wished I’d done it myself so I didn’t have to be the one left behind. Maybe if I’d been braver I could’ve been the one to die instead.”

“Don’t say shit like that,” he hisses.

“Why not?”

“Because—” he starts angrily, then goes silent quickly. Something’s wrong.

John pulls away finally to look him in the eyes. “What?”

“Shh.”

Freddie lets go of him finally, turning to look toward the edge of the woods. “Do you hear that?”

It’s dogs, he realizes finally. Dogs and shouting. “It’s the army,” he whispers.

“Army?”

“The king’s men came to bring me back. They think I can still use the power but I can’t. I’ve never been able to.” He licks his lips. “You guys need to run.”

John stares at him incredulously. “You’re insane if you think we’re leaving you with them.”

“I’m not kidding. I have a plan, but you guys need to run _now_. Get back to camp. Get to Brian. I’ll find a way to hold them off.”

“If they take you away you’ll probably never see him again. He’s running out of time, Rog.”

“They’re not gonna get me,” he says.

“That’s what you said last time.”

“Trust me. Please.” He looks at them earnestly. “I can fix this. Go.”

They hesitate, torn.

“Go!” he shouts again and watches them scurry back into the tree line, sprinting in the direction of camp.

Immediately he turns the other way. He can hear the sound of hoofs now, the din growing nearer. He doesn’t have much time. He runs around the side of the house toward the tall hill at its rear just as he hears the army enter the clearing.

“He went that way!” he hears Norman shout. “Go! Go!”

He lunges up the hill—a steep incline, but he’s done it enough times that he knows to catch himself on his hands and claw his way up. The army will have much more trouble with their metal boots and their horses, and that at least buys him a few extra seconds. He scrambles up one last root, mud working its way deep under his fingernails and making him wince.

The mud gives way finally to ash and he stands.

It’s still flat here, flat as if some great being had simply knocked the top of the hill away, and he can see over the forest for miles and miles. The earth is still scorched and dark but the great cross of wood has been restacked carefully out of fresh logs, tinder and sawdust piled at its base.

_Gotta rebuild it if we want it to do anything. Good test run, wouldn’t you say?_

He already knows Spike will give him shit for forgetting about them later—for forgetting about their plans. When times had first gotten hard, when his family had first started struggling, when Brian had no longer been able to bring home a paycheck, it was a handful of friends from the pubs who he’d turned to. The Cross had become a tight-knit network, brothers in arms against the cruelty of the world. They’d been willing to take the risks that Roger’s lovers wouldn’t, taking up more and more dangerous missions but always bringing enough money back to Freddie, Brian and John to put food on the table. Where his family had closed down into itself, protecting what little it had with a fierce loyalty and desire to avoid any attention rebellion would bring, his friends had understood the desperation to bring the whole system tumbling down for good.

His family is his heart and soul tossed into the cold outskirts of a citadel that would never protect them; The Cross is the mind calculating the odds, the hand pushing for a change.

The pyre reek of oil when he gets close. He pokes through the ash and dirt until he locates the flintstone they’d left there. He crouches behind the pyre quickly, tugging one of the knives he’d pilfered from the tower out of his bag and quickly sending some sparks into the sawdust at the base of the logs.

For one breathless moment nothing happens, and then all at once the gas catches. Within seconds the pyre is going up in flames, crackling into an inferno and filling the air with smoke.

He stands and faces the side of the hill, the fire roaring and raging behind him, just as the first of the soldiers clambers up the slope.

“Put it out!” the soldier screams.

Roger shakes his head, then laughs in spite of himself. He can feel the heat of the inferno at his back, the blaze sending a wind whipping across the hillside.

He’s surrounded quickly. Somehow even the cavalry made it up the slope, and the horses toss their heads in fright when they see the blaze. Their riders hold fast, pointing spears Roger’s direction as the rest of the army close in. Someone kicks him to his knees and he lands hard, catching himself on his palms before straightening as Norman arrives and paces closer. He has a horrible lump already forming on his temple and it makes Roger grin.

“Sir, we’ll find a way to extinguish—”

“Shut up,” Norman snaps. “It’s too late, idiot. Haven’t you ever seen a smoke signal before?” He gestures to the east, where already another plume of smoke is rising.

Roger smiles harder. That’s two out of seven; within a minute the entire kingdom will have received the message.  

Norman growls and paces closer. “I don’t know who you’re calling out to, but it’s all in vain. What, did you think they’d all come here and sweep you away from us? We’ll be long gone before they even think to come to your aid.”

Roger spits on his shoes.

Norman grips his chin between two fingers. “They’ll never find you. We’re never letting you go again.”

_You thought we’d just let you go? You really thought it would be that easy?_

The dirt below his knees is hard marble. The smoke choking him is clean air perfumed with honeysuckle. The heat at his back is replaced with the ever-present chill of the castle. He is the same; the soldiers are the same; Norman is the same.

He blinks, and he’s on the floor of the throne room.

“I thought I’d think of something,” he hears himself say, taking a brave stab at cocky. “Thought I’d fight my way out if I had to. Hell, I’m still willing.”

“Hush, little one. No more fighting from you.”

“Oh, you think that will be that easy?”

“I think whoever you’re trying to heal is probably on a pretty short time frame,” Norman says sweetly.

Roger freezes.

“That’s the goal, isn’t it? They must be in a pretty bad way for you to go to such desperate measures.” He lets go of his jaw suddenly to pet his cheek instead, and Roger does flinch at that. “Which member of your little band of miscreants is it, hmm? Freddie, maybe? Yes,” he says at the look on Roger’s face. “We know all about Freddie. There’s quite the gossip to be found about him in pubs, you know. Or the back rooms, anyway. Tell me, does he still get around like that or has he given it up for true love?”

“Shut the fuck up,” he snaps, jerking against the hands holding him back. They hold fast.

“Maybe the tall one. What’s his name? Oh, I can never remember. You know, he always looks so thin. One cold breeze could just knock him right over. Have you got him somewhere warm, Roger? Are you sure he’s safe? And what about the youngest of you lot, the little one. He’s sweet. Now how did someone like that end up with a kill order on his head?” He laughs quietly. “Quite the celebrity at his age. We’ve got a few assassins waiting for the command. They won’t do it without the king’s word, but you know how accidents can happen sometimes. One misfire and the next thing you know the target’s slowly bleeding out on the street, just like that.”

Roger refuses to show him a reaction to that. John isn’t stupid; he knows when he’s being followed and he’s good at shaking a tail. There’s no way that’s the truth. “You’ll never catch him. Chase him all you want. You’ll never get any of them.”

“We’re past chasing,” Norman says, turning to the soldiers crowding the hall. “There’s a house in the woods somewhere between here and the port. A mole blabbed yesterday. Find it.”

Roger carefully keeps his face straight, mind racing. They’ll be okay. They know to get out. They know how to run.

Do they know how to run?

Fuck. Brian can’t run, not right now. He needs to be somewhere warm and safe. He can’t be on the move like this. If he dies alone in the cold it’ll all be Roger’s fault.

He blinks and his surroundings come back to him: the smoke acrid in the air and thick in his throat, the fire burning his eyes, the trees all but engulfed in the haze of smoke. Damned flashbacks; he thought he was done with this shit.

Brian can’t run anymore. Freddie and John have almost reached the end of the map. That doesn’t matter. He can still protect them from afar. He can do this; he can draw the attention of the crown away from them and buy them just a little time.

“I’m never working for you again,” he says to Norman, pulling up his last ounce of cocky bravado.

“You will.”

“Fuck the crown, and fuck you,” he laughs. “I’ll enjoy twiddling my thumbs in the tower while you all shrivel and die of old age.”

Norman stands up, the fire making his skin glow and shrouding his figure in the thick smoke. “We’ll see about that,” he says.

He nods to one of his men. Roger doesn’t even feel the blow to the head. He barely registers his own slip from consciousness as he falls to the ground. The world goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things?! Being revealed?! Shocking, I know!
> 
> The scene in the house was the first chapter of this fic that I wrote. Actually I think it was the first Queen thing I'd ever written. I wrote that in like. December. So hopefully it's aged well. 
> 
> Things you were expecting? Things you weren't? Questions you still have? Let me know your thoughts. I love hearing them!


	6. Chapter 6

He wakes up in bed, stretching and sighing in contentment as his skin brushes against the fine silk sheets. He can’t remember ever having slept that well.

Then he opens his eyes and is struck with panic.

 _Shit._ The sun is so low in the sky it must be mid-afternoon already. Why did they let him sleep in? It’s Thursday. He has practice on Thursdays.

What did he do last night to make him sleep so late into the day?

What did he do yesterday?

What was yesterday?

“Norman?” he calls.

Nobody answers.

He sits up quickly then holds his head as a rush of dizziness hits him. He doesn’t feel right.

The silk sheets pool around his ankles as he moves across the plush mattress so he can see outside better. All he can see from here is the sky, the tower just a shade too tall for the horizon to be visible from where he’s sitting. The light burns his sensitive eyes and he looks quickly away, rubbing his fingers carefully over his eyelids until he sees stars.

_Do they ever make you lonely?_

Gods, what the hell did he do last night? He doesn’t drink—isn’t allowed to—and he rarely stays up late. There’s simply no reason his head should be in the frazzled state it’s in now.

The door swings open and Norman slides through with a tray of tea.

“You’re awake!” he says, chipper. “Excellent. I was beginning to worry.”

"What happened to your face?" Roger asks, eyes wide. 

Norman winces, shrugging and turning his face to one side so the purple bruise branching out from one temple is invisible. "Just a fall down the stairs. Don't you worry about it. I'm more worried about you."

Roger frowns to himself as Norman sets the tray down beside his bed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t up sooner. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Yesterday—what happened?”

“Oh, you got sick early in the day. You were delirious.”

_My friend, the one who’s sick—_

“Sick,” he mumbles.

“Yes! Horribly sick. I’m glad to see you in good spirits again.”

He looks out the window. The sky is blue and endless and cold even with the sun shining. There’s smoke rising in the distance.

“Fortunately we can begin your training again immediately,” Norman goes on, stirring some sugar into Roger’s tea without him asking. “You know, it’s of the utmost importance that you master this, Roger. I think you understand how your parents—”

“How’d I get sick?” Roger asks.

Norman pauses. “It’s rude to interrupt. Don’t do it again.”

“Sorry.”

“If you must know, you left the window open overnight and caught a chill.”

Norman holds out the teacup to Roger. Roger stares at it unseeing, lost in thought, and Norman huffs when he doesn’t immediately take it.

“I don’t get sick,” Roger says. He frowns. He doesn’t get sick; the flower prevents it. He’s never been sick in his life.

“There’s a first time for everything!” Norman says impatiently, pushing the tea into Roger’s hands and lifting the mug toward his lips so he can’t speak. “Perhaps it’s a sign that you’re getting worse with your gift. I don’t know how, after all the training we’ve put you through. You really aren’t applying yourself.”

An explosion sounds outside and Roger jumps, spilling tea on the sheets.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Norman mutters.

“What the hell was that?” Roger asks, eyes glued to the smoke rising in the distance. He can’t see anything but sky from here, but the plume is getting taller and taller. Another explosion goes off.

“Don’t mind that,” Norman drawls. “Some small insurrection among the peasants outside the citadel. It’ll be done before evening. They never make it very far.”

The smoke is grey; so grey and dark. He remembers what it smells like when it’s clogging all his senses, remembers the way an inferno sounds up close.

He stands quickly and pushes past Norman, ripping his wrist out of his grip when the man tries to grab him. He rushes to the window and throws it open.

There isn’t much to see from here, but he can see fires burning in the lower levels of the citadel and people rushing about. The plains outside of the walls are complete chaos as people storm the gates. Groups of soldiers are assembling in the guard towers and the cavalry is lining up in the streets.

“Roger, come sit down,” Norman snaps.

Roger shakes his head, mostly to himself. “Why are they rebelling?”

“I can’t hear you, son. Speak up.”

“I’m not your son,” he mutters. He’s not; he’s not his son. He isn’t the king’s son, either.

“What did you say?”

“I’m not your son!” he shouts.

His head aches suddenly as if it’s being split open, memories flooding out in the blink of an eye. He gasps, reeling backward as images flash across his vision so quickly he feels nauseous. He isn’t his son; he isn’t the king’s son; he doesn’t belong here and he never has. This isn’t him.

Fuck. It’s happened again. He’s let himself be torn away from them again. He’s running out of time.

Norman stands up in a flash and backhands him hard.

He stumbles back a step, feeling the heat of magic already flooding to his cheek. “What?” he snarls. “You’re really looking to be beat up with a coffee pot again?”

Norman’s face pales, and then his eyes fill with fury. “Guards!” he screams.

Two soldiers enter the room, dragging a man between them. He isn’t old but seems older than his years nonetheless; his balding hair is beginning to grow grey and his eyes are tired. He looks completely different than when Roger had seen him for the first time, three months ago in the throne room. He’s only recognizable by the palace magician’s robes which now hang dirty from his frame.

“Curse him again,” Norman snaps.

The magician looks at him levelly, completely calm. “That’s not how this works. If the spell won’t hold there’s nothing we can do about it. It’ll get weaker and weaker each time. I don’t know what you think I can do.”

“How about you do it better? How about everybody in this room stops failing me for once and does their fucking job?” Norman screams. “How about you either do what we brought you here to do or else face the gallows?”

“It’s not going to work,” the man tries one last time.

Norman snaps at the guards. “Take him to the dungeon. This one, too,” he adds as an afterthought, gesturing at Roger. “We’ll find someone who can get him to do his damned job. The family leaves at dusk. I want him ready.”

One of the guards steps forward and Roger manages to elbow him hard in the kidneys once before he’s dragged down, cursing and spitting about his smaller size the whole way. His feet skid uselessly against the flagstones of the floor as he’s hauled out of the room, down the stairs of the tower and further into the bowels of the castle. They descend stairway after stairway, the air slowly getting heavy and damp and the light dying above them.

“Something in it for you if you let me go,” he hisses at the guard.

The guard huffs, twisting his arms harder behind his back. “Why’d I do that?”

“The revolution is coming,” Roger gets out, still struggling to get his feet under himself. “They want me back. You’ll be rewarded if you return me to them.”

The guard scoffs. The torchlight of the dungeon is low enough that his face is just barely visible, the odd high window adding a cold glint to his hair. “I’ll be rewarded even better if I keep you hostage. The revolution will fail. They all do.”

“This one won’t.”

He’s thrown bodily into a cell, landing hard next to the magician. “Don’t hold your breath,” the guard says. He locks the door and the two of them walk away, leaving Roger and his cellmate alone.

Roger lays there silently for all of twenty seconds. That’s how long it takes for him to inhale deeply, hold it and then let it out again, something Brian taught him years ago when he couldn’t quite get a handle on the rashness of his anger. He lets everything fade away except for his immediate surroundings: the tall ceilings of the dungeon, the cold wet floor beneath him, the torchlight flickering outside the cell and the grey light of day filtering from somewhere above, the smell of mildew and the distant squeak of rats. He lets his breath slowly leave his lungs and centers himself in the present.

Then he remembers the way Brian had looked the last time he’d seen him, and the breathing exercises don’t quite work this time.

He turns and punches the magician hard in the arm.

“Ow!”

“Shut up. This is all your fault,” Roger replies, sullen.

The magician sighs, eyes as steady as always. “Roger, you’re smart enough to know I didn’t choose this.”

“If you wanted to disobey his orders you should’ve tried it three months ago. You could have saved us all a lot of time.”

“Things have changed.”

“Sure.” Roger wonders distantly what the camp must look like right now. He wonders if Brian is still breathing. “Yeah, they sure have. Listen, how about you start making up for lost time and bust us out of here?”

The magician gestures at some runes carved into the ceiling. “No magic.”

“What exactly are you good for then, magician?”

“Right now, not much,” he replies, resting his head on his arms. “And I’m not much of a magician anymore. My name’s Jim.”

Roger rolls his eyes. “I don’t care.”

“Figured you probably wouldn’t.”

“Listen,” Roger snarls. “At this rate you’re not gonna make it to your date with the gallows, alright? Do not fucking think about getting cute with me after all the bullshit you’ve put me through. Fuck you.”

“Roger, I didn’t have a choice.”

“Everyone has a choice.”

“They had my family,” Jim says flatly. “If I refused they’d kill them and then they’d find someone else who would cast that curse on you instead.”

“What about my family, huh? Didn’t my family matter at all?”

“Last I checked your family wasn’t dead quite yet.”

That hits him like a punch to the chest. The implication alone should make him angry enough to burn the entire castle down around them, but then he thinks of his lovers—thinks of lazy mornings months ago spent waking up slowly around each other, the first rays of sun making John squint and Freddie sit up to stretch in the rays, Brian rolling over tiredly to hide his face in Roger’s shoulder for a few more minutes.

He thinks of them in camp right now, alone and tired and hungry and waiting for him to come back to them, and the anger sputters out and dies.

“Yeah, well,” Roger replies, flopping back onto the cement floor. “If they aren’t now they’ll probably be dead soon.”

“Mine, too,” Jim murmurs.

They lay there in silence for a long minute, Roger letting the cold seep slowly into his bones. “The revolution is coming. We might still be able to get out of here.”

Jim turns to look at him skeptically. “You, maybe. The royal family will be moved out soon, you know. They were getting ready for it this morning.”

“So? I’m not part of the royal family.”

“You won’t know that.”

“They don’t have a magician.”

“They’ll find one. They’ve got plenty of others stored away. Even if they don’t they’ll take you with them anyway. They won’t let you go, especially not when their power is being threatened.”

“Do you know where they’ll take me?” Roger murmurs.

Jim purses his lips before shaking his head minutely. “North, most likely. The old palace. It’s got remnants of old magic. Chances are you’ll have a bit tougher of a time breaking the curse there. They’ll establish a new seat of power, finally figure out a way to reverse their aging again…”

“I can’t do it,” Roger says.

“I know.”

“Do they know?”

“They have an inkling. I advised them as much, anyway. People aren’t rational when they’re desperate,” he says firmly, looking at Roger pointedly again.

Roger chews that over glumly. There’s no way out of it, then; it doesn’t matter if they know he can’t do it as long as they think there’s a chance. The best opportunity he’ll have will be them slipping up and allowing him a chance to escape again, but if his brain is as frazzled as it’s been the last few months he doubts his own ability to jump on such a lapse of reasoning.

“And you?” he asks, a little too loudly. “You might still make it.”

“I don’t like to be so optimistic. Death doesn’t give us much choice as to when it comes. Everyone has to go eventually, even the king and queen.”

“Death can’t be outrun.”

“No.”

And that’s the reality of it: those who live their lives outrunning death don’t live, literally or figuratively.

Is he outrunning death? Is that what he’s doing? Running not against his own clock but against Brian’s, in a futile race where all the odds are stacked against him and where every obstacle reaches out to snare him and drag him backward?

No, he can’t allow himself to think like that. He will get back to his family if it’s the last thing he does; if he drags himself there from his fucking grave, if he has to kill the king and queen with his own bare hands; no matter what happens he will not abandon them. It settles with the weight of an unshakable truth in his chest, that he knows Brian’s clock as he knows his own and as he knows death. Even if the flower keeps him alive forever the royal family will inevitably wither and die, and he’ll take his leave of them then: step through their lonely halls over their cold corpses and return to where he belongs, even if that so happens to be three unmarked graves outside of a house in the woods. He’ll always come back to them.

He can’t allow himself to think thoughts like that either, though. He’ll be on time. He has to be.

“It doesn’t matter if I make it or not,” Jim says, voice measured and impassive. “It’s alright because I know the king and queen won’t. You may see that as your own incompetence, but I see that as luck. Everyone must die, even them.”

“Good fucking riddance, if you ask me,” Roger mutters. “They’re never taking me. They’ll never be able to hold onto me. I’ll always remember.”

 “For your sake I hope not,” Jim replies.

The dungeon door bangs open, light flooding the hallway leading into the gaping space.  

Roger sits up as footsteps approach. He strains to hear but he can only make out the faint tread of someone much lighter than the average guard. There’s no typical clank of metal armor, no leisured paces of someone who has all the time in the world. Someone is running lightly toward them.

He’s just about to look around for some sort of makeshift weapon when a familiar woman flies into the dungeon.

“Giselle?” he asks dumbly.

“Not my real name,” she says, looking around. Roger’s bag is slung over her shoulder and she drops it on the floor as she continues to search the space.

Jim sits up warily. “You two know each other?”

“We ran into her in the woods,” Roger says. “She was working for the crown at the time. Giselle—”

“ _Not_ my real name. It’s Veronica. Thanks for asking.”

“Sorry,” he says, properly cowed. “Veronica’s a witch from the northern territories.”

“Part of the rebel forces, now. Congratulations, by the way. I’m here to free you. The Cross send their regards.”

“You can’t magic us out,” Jim replies, gesturing up at the runes on the ceiling.

Wordlessly she plucks a ring of keys off a hook on the wall. Jim huffs a laugh.

Roger crowds closer to the door as she sets to work. “We owe you for this,” he says quietly.

She shrugs. “I owe your friend for the help. He’s cute.”

Roger raises his eyebrows, looking back at Jim.

Veronica rolls her eyes. “The one from before. The puppy dog trying to be a rottweiler?”

“John?”

“That his name?”

“He’s engaged.”

“Damn. Who to?”

He raises his arms in sarcastic jazz hands, fingers splayed.

“Oh. Good catch.” The lock pops and she swings the door open.

“I’ll get you a wedding invite,” he says consolingly, stepping out. “If we even have time to get married, that is.”

“I might be able to save you some,” she replies.

“Wedding invites?”

“Time. Spike set up a portal to get me in here. It won’t get you all the way to your camp but it’ll get you close.” She picks up his bag and hands it to him. “Fetched this from the guard’s room. Come on.”

He starts after her, gesturing at Jim until the man rolls his eyes and hauls himself up off the dungeon’s floor to follow them down the hall and up the stairs toward the light. “What about me?” the magician asks.

“You can go with him if you’d like. It’ll clear you of all the fighting.”

Jim shakes his head. “I’d rather be of use here, if that’s alright. I’ve been an adviser to the king for years. I know things that might be able to help.”

She nods. “I’ll talk to Spike about it. We could use someone from the inside.”

They turn down an abandoned corridor somewhere in the upper levels of the castle’s basement. Veronica snags a torch off the wall to light the way, pushing aside cobwebs as she goes. It’s dark and unwelcoming here, and Roger shivers as they walk further until they’re surrounded on all sides by darkness. Fortunately Veronica seems to know where they’re going, leading them surely through the maze of turns and abandoned statues and lost paintings.

“It’s over here,” she says, waving the torch toward a nondescript tapestry hanging on the wall.

 “Thank Spike for me, alright?” Roger says as they stop. He adjusts his bag nervously. “The others, too. I should be out there with them. I put this whole thing into motion. I should be on the front lines.”

“There’s only one place you should be right now,” she replies. “He said so himself.” She grips the tapestry tight and yanks it off the wall, and it falls away to reveal a mirror. The glass reflects nothing, just an empty pool of blackness.

“Through there?”

She nods. “You need to hurry. I don’t know much about what’s going on, but I know you’re down to minutes and seconds, here. You know what you need to do.”

Fuck.

He nods once. “Thank you.”

“Go.”

He takes one last look at the two of them, Veronica lit by the flames and Jim standing haggard but with a new light of determination in his eyes. Roger nods once and steps through the mirror, straight into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, we're in the home stretch! Look at us go!
> 
> Thank you so much to everybody who's commented and left kudos. If you haven't yet I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this bit! Comments complete my life <3


	7. Chapter 7

He holds out his hands to steady himself.

The darkness is completely stifling and disorienting to the point he can’t see a single thing. When he reaches back to the mirror his fingers meet cool glass, the connection with the palace already broken. He’s alone.

He reaches into his bag, tracing over the items there carefully. There’s the handle of the coffee pot, somehow still not carrying a single dent. There’s the handle of one of his knives. There, hidden in the little side pocket, is the familiar smooth metal of his ring. He takes it out and holds it in his fist, pressing its shape into his palm as he tries to get his bearings.

He can hear his own breathing echoed back at him. It’s a small space then, a warm space. When he reaches out again his fingers meet fine fur, ridiculously soft against his skin. He trails his fingers up and up until he reaches the top, familiarity sparking in his brain.

Slowly he moves sideways, trailing his fingers off the fur and onto silk, then satin, then velvet, then finally to wood. He reaches out blindly until he feels a doorknob and turns it, stepping out into the soft glow filtering in through the windows of their bedroom back at the house.

The shards of the pitcher are still on the floor and the space is still eerily quiet. He hurries out into the hallway and down the stairs, pausing only to lock the door before running into the woods.

His breath falls into a familiar rhythm, quick and even as his boots beat against the forest floor. The last time he’d made this journey it had been in the delirium of returning memories and broken curses, but some part of his brain must’ve filed the path away; a duck under a half-fallen tree, a left at the river and then a run along its banks. Running and running and running.

The wall of trees and brambles is as subtle as when he’d first seen it yet recognizable now that he knows what to look for. The trinkets in the trees sway and clink in a soothing chaotic music as he runs through, exploding into the clearing.

Freddie is stepping out of Brian’s tent as he does, presumably to see what the commotion is. When he sees Roger he puts a hand over his mouth, gesturing him forward with the other.

Roger swallows when he gets closer, seeing tears in his eyes. “Is he—”

Freddie shakes his head, gathering himself and pacing quickly back toward the tent. “No. No, he’s—not yet.”

Roger rushes after him, pushing into the tent quickly and almost tripping over John where he’s sitting in the doorway. Panic is clogging his throat but he pushes it down resolutely, looking to the pile of blankets where Brian lays.

Hazel eyes meet blue. “Roger,” he starts, gaze clear and lucid for the first time Roger’s seen it for months.

Then he rolls over and coughs, blood spraying over the sheets and barely missing Freddie’s shoes.

The blood keeps coming up until it’s pooling on the rags Freddie hastily threw down and he keeps wheezing and it’s _horrible_ , worse than anything he's seen. Before Roger knows it he’s falling to his knees at his side, helplessly fluttering and trying to think of anything to make it stop, but he can't. “Can't we do something?” he half-snaps to Freddie, who looks at him with big wet eyes.

“He's been like this since noon. Tim said…”

“Stop,” Brian gets out, rolling over with a shaky gasp. There's blood on his chin, and something about the red against the yellow shade of his skin makes Roger feel queasy. “Fred, don't. It's alright.”

“It isn't!”

Brian just sighs again and lets his eyes drift shut as he struggles to catch his breath.

There's a bowl of water and a cloth next to his bed, and at a loss Roger reaches for them. He lifts Brian into his lap with his other hand. He was never able to do that before, even with him as gangly and thin as he was. He doesn't like it now, but shoves the thought away and carefully begins cleaning his face until every trace of sweat and blood is gone.

“There’s nothing more anyone can do,” Freddie whispers finally, half to himself. “That’s what they all said. You came just in time, but there’s nothing left. We can’t do anything.”

Roger sees John curl inward before simply flopping down against Brian’s leg, silent and stormy as only John can be.

“Can't what?” Brian mumbles.

“Darling, can you hear me?”

He hums. “Roger came back for me.”

“I know, dear,” Freddie mumbles, defeated.

“He came back.”

“I did,” Roger tells him seriously. Brian lets out a rattling breath before coughing weakly again, and Roger wipes the flecks of blood off his lips gently. “I did.”

He hums a string of nonsense notes, voice cracking. He can see John’s shoulders trembling as he cries even if he can’t see his face; his broad fingers are entwined with Brian’s own spindly ones, though Brian barely seems to notice. His eyes are hazy now, barely focused.

“Bri?” he whispers.

Brian blinks once.

“I tried so hard. I did. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Roger,” he says.

“I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t good enough.”

“Rog.”

Roger holds his breath as he waits for the next words, but Brian pauses for a long moment to take a few shallowed and labored breaths. He’s slipping away; Roger can feel him slipping away, can feel it physically like a phantom pain. He’s going to lose him. Accepting that after months of this hurts—literally hurts. It feels like giving up.

Brian’s eyes drift shut. “Sing to me,” he whispers.

There’s only one song that comes to mind, an old melody that used to circle around their bedroom and weave into the moonlight. “ _You and me_ ,” he starts. John shudders and lets out a horrible choked noise, half-stifled against Brian’s hip, and Brian’s hand tightens in his. He can’t stop now, though. _“We are destined, you’ll agree,”_ he continues, and Brian sighs.

Freddie sniffles bravely before joining in, voice pinched but still lovely. _“To spend the rest of our lives with each other,”_ he sings, and Roger meets his eyes briefly, watching them grow red.

 _“The rest of our days, like two lovers,”_ he continues, brushing the sweaty curls off his forehead. He’s always had such lovely hair. Roger remembers the first time he’d seen him; the way his curls bounced as he danced in the pub, cheeks pink from drinking and eyes bright, forever ingrained behind Roger’s eyelids. He kisses the burning heat of his forehead. _“Forever,”_ he finishes.

Brian sighs contentedly, face yellow, and then he is still.

Nobody moves. It’s John who finally lets out a stifled sob, and that sets Roger off, too. It isn’t fair. None of it is. He looks at the ring on the cord around Brian’s neck; looks at the matching one still clenched in his hand. It isn’t fair and it hurts, a literal bone-deep ache. He feels like he’s dying, too.

Freddie is crying silently, not moving an inch except to take Brian’s other hand in his and trace a finger over the swollen knuckles. Roger pushes his hair off his clammy forehead one last time before curling over him, trapping the both of them in this world surrounded by the golden sheet of his hair where nothing else can hurt them. He presses their foreheads together, Brian’s still too-hot against his own, and lets the tears come as he squeezes his eyes shut to block out the light.

Except the light can’t be blocked.

“Roger, sweetheart,” Freddie breathes. “Your hair.”

He opens his eyes.

His hair is glowing gently, a pulsing golden light. He feels Freddie’s hand skate along his back. John’s head is brushing against his thigh, warm and soft. Brian’s lifeless face is inches from his own, the sickly yellow shade of his skin turned warm by the light. He traces a thumb over his cheek and watches the light play across his own skin.

A tear falls onto his cheek.

It doesn’t splash off the skin like Roger expects it to; instead it somehow sinks inward, illuminating the delicate lines of Brian’s face as it does. He watches in awe as it sinks deeper until it’s out of sight, as if it never existed. But no, that’s not right. Color returns suddenly to Brian’s lips and the yellow fades gradually from his cheeks. Roger traces his throat for a pulse, and when he just barely finds one he swears his own heart stops for a beat.

“Brian,” he breathes.

Brian’s lips part on a gasp.

“Roger?” he croaks, and when his eyes open they’re clean white, no trace of yellow to be seen.

Roger stares at him: his skin back to his normal color, gaze no longer clouded by fever and the rattle gone from his breathing. His arm has shrunk rapidly back down to its regular size.

“I feel _really_ odd,” Brian says then, probably just for something to break the silence, and in one move Roger pulls him up and into his chest. Brian’s arms come to be around his shoulders, holding on with as much strength as he ever had. And then a moment later he can feel John plastered against his back and still crying into his shoulder, and then he hears the rustling of Freddie’s clothes as he moves to support some of Brian’s weight.

“I'm okay, Fred. I swear,” Brian says. “I haven't felt this good in ages. Since forever, maybe. “

“You aren't _okay_ , dear. Maybe it slipped your notice but you were—you fucking died!”

“Died?”

“Yes! You were dead, and then Roger did—did something and now you’re—”

Brian looks to John, face still hidden in Roger’s neck. He cranes his head to look at Freddie, eyes red and hands shaking. When he finally faces Roger he looks downright alarmed. He reaches up to brush his tears away, which only makes him cry harder.

“I thought you were dead,” Brian murmurs finally.

“Likewise,” Roger gets out.

“Our family was broken. There was a hole—”

“And there was another one just now,” John says, voice muffled.

“Deaks, it’s alright.”

“Don’t _do_ that.”

“Die?”

“Yes!”

“It’s okay. Come here.”

“I hate you,” John gets out, face splotchy and red. A moment later it’s hidden against Brian’s stomach when he manages to worm his way between him and Roger.

Brian just smiles. “I love you, too.”

 

They cling to each other for long hours. How long, Roger can’t say. He drifts in and out of consciousness, greeted every time he moves toward wakefulness by John mumbling something against his neck or Brian squirming closer. At one point he wakes not to the call itself but to Freddie’s whispered answer.

“He’s asleep,” he’s saying. “He did it, but it wore him out.”

“This is all very sweet, but are you sure he’s out? I just need him for a minute. Work stuff, you know.”

Roger opens his eyes and looks to the man leaning through the flap of the tent. “Spike,” he whispers.

Spike grins. “Just an update from the front lines. The army turned against the crown. It’s only the royal guards holding the castle now. We’ll be in before midnight.”

He closes his eyes again. “I’m sure Sid’s thrilled.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. We’ll signal when we’ve got the palace.”

“Good work, mate,” he says, then falls back asleep.

It’s Brian’s restless shifting that rouses them all, in the end. After much prodding and concern he admits to being horribly stiff after weeks of being confined to bedrest, and horribly hungry to boot.

“I didn’t think,” Freddie frets. “We have food somewhere, I’m sure. It shouldn’t be hard to pull something together.”

“Shouldn’t be,” John sighs, sitting up.

“You don’t have to do it,” Freddie tells him.

“No offense, but I don’t know that Brian can stomach you or Roger’s cooking right now.”

“Hey,” Roger complains without heat, sitting up in his blanket pile. “I’ll have you know I’m a delight in the kitchen.”

“Are you sure your memories all came back? I seem to remember you somehow setting fire to an uncracked egg.”

“That was one time, John.”

“You can pretend to help if it would make you feel better.”

Roger grins. “I’m excellent at pretending to help.”

“Does that mean I’m off the hook?” Brian asks, gingerly touching his own hair. “I need to take a bath. I don’t know how you guys put up with me. I feel disgusting.”

“You’re as beautiful as the day I met you,” Freddie says sweetly, and Brian rolls his eyes.

“Sap.”

“Let me help you wash your hair, then. Come on.”

After a few false starts Brian stands on shaky legs, Freddie supporting him as he makes his way to the river to bathe in the shallows. Roger watches them from his place by the fire, the moon rising to illuminate their silhouettes and turn water droplets to crystal as Freddie carefully pours a cup over Brian’s hair. It flies through the air as Brian shakes his head like a dog and manages to drench Freddie’s entire person and Freddie laughs loudly, teeth on full display as he splashes him back.

“It’s good to see him laugh again,” John says with a smile as he stirs a pot over the fire. He gives it one last look before plopping down next to Roger on the pile of blankets he’s dragged with him to the fire. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah?” Roger asks. He hesitates before dragging him closer until he can lean against his chest. His shoulder is a little sharp against his cheek, but Roger doesn’t mind.

“Things were hard for all of us,” John replies. Roger can hear his voice rumbling in his chest this close. It’s soothing even if his words aren’t. “There hasn’t been much food outside of the citadel. People have been getting more and more desperate, and without you and Brian it was a bit of a scramble. We made do,” he rushes to add. “We did, but it’s been hard.”

“What’d you do?” Roger murmurs.

“The same things you did. Some hustling, some banditry. It was the worst in the beginning. We’d left the house to look for you when you didn’t come home, but when we got back the army was there. We had to move out here.”

Roger nods. “A mole. Someone in the pub talked. I have no clue who.”

John shrugs. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. And we got out, so it didn’t change anything in the end.”

“Did you ever try to go back?” Roger asks him.

“For a little while. Freddie couldn’t really sleep there. I think it just reminded him of you,” he confides in a murmur. “And then Brian got worse and started having nightmares, and we figured it would be best to get a fresh start. Even if it’s this squatter camp,” he adds dryly, gesturing to the tents. “Beggars can’t be choosers, though. We got some help from people around the villages who heard what was going on. Spike and those guys helped out. Sid helped out for a little while too, but I think their crowd was only ever really loyal to you and the work you were doing. They never liked us much.”

“I’m glad they helped anyway,” Roger murmurs. He closes his eyes. “I’m glad they did it even if they didn’t want to. I’m glad you guys made it through.”

He feels a hand ruffle his hair affectionately. “Getting sleepy again?”

“Oh, leave me alone.”

He feels John’s chest tremble as he laughs. “Come on, sleeping beauty. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“If I’m anyone I’m Rapunzel.”

“Why’s that?”

“Pretty hair,” he says defiantly.

“Really? Didn’t you dye it at the castle?”

“No! It’s the fucking magic making it lighter, I told you.”

John looks at him doubtfully. “It doesn’t look that light.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Roger says, then whines when John moves to get up. “No, don’t.”

“I’ve got to stir that.”

“But then where will I nap?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he laughs. “Freddie? Bri? Who wants pillow duty?”

Roger opens his eyes blearily to see the two of them approaching, Brian walking carefully on stiff legs and Freddie trailing after him trying to towel his hair dry. They look somehow invincible this way, moonlight falling gently on their shoulders. “You’re angels,” he tells them, just because he can.

“You’re a charmer,” Freddie replies with a laugh, scooting in to take John’s place. “Come on, darling.”

He sighs and settles against his chest, tucking his legs in so he can curl up in Freddie’s lap. Brian sits down carefully and rests his head against Freddie’s other shoulder, and Roger prods his thigh lightly. “Sore?”

“Just stiff,” he replies. “I haven’t been up in a while, I suppose. Tired too, somehow.”

Roger nods. “I guess that’s one thing I couldn’t fix. You’ll need rest. We probably both will.”

“It really wore you out?”

“I wasn’t expecting it to,” he replies, stifling a yawn. “Wasn’t expecting it to work, honestly. I kind of thought the powers thing was a load of shit.”

Brian’s silent for a moment. “What happened after you left?” He asks quietly. “You haven’t said.”

He sighs, letting his eyes drift closed. Distantly he notes John returning to the pile, laying his head in Brian’s lap. “I got in just fine. Found the flower. It was easy until I tried to leave. They caught up with me. I knew they were going to want it back but like hell if I was going to let those dinosaurs sit on the throne for another two hundred years. I figured I was a dead man anyway, so…” The memory comes back to him in a rush: sprawled on the marble, Norman looking down at him in disdain.

“What did you do?”

“I ate it.”

They’re all silent for a long minute.

“You _what?_ ” John says finally, letting out a burst of laughter. The others join in.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I ate it!” He can’t help but grin as John throws an arm over his face. “Yeah, laugh it up. It tasted terrible, I’ll tell you that.”

“What did they do?” John asks through giggles.

“Couldn’t do much. Just watched while I chewed the damn thing,” he says, sobering quickly. “They figured I must’ve absorbed its powers and wanted me to work for the king. I said I’d never work for him of my own free will, so they summoned the magician to take my memories away.”

“That’s a stupid plan,” Freddie mutters.

“Easier to save your father than your hated overlord,” Roger reasons. “Anyway, they didn’t do a very good job. It was a—”

_“—rush job,” the magician said. “That’s all I have time for. He’ll know he has a loving family and a good childhood, and that he was born with a gift that he needs to use to protect them.”_

_“I’ll never believe that,” Roger spat._

_Norman sends him a withering look. “Unfortunately he’s right,” he says. “Changing his memories won’t change his will. This isn’t going to work.”_

_“If he never has reason to question his own will then it won’t matter,” the magician explains. “He doesn’t need to like us, he just needs to forget about hating us. Anyone he’s met who has suffered at our hand, any motivations he may have to leave the citadel, any reasons to mistrust us...he loses that, and gaining his trust won’t be a difficult endeavor. This is all I have time for. Take it or leave it.”_

_“Fine,” Norman spits. “Jim, if this doesn’t work you know whose head will be on the line.”_

_Jim looks to Roger, eyes full of trepidation and regret. Hesitantly he reaches out a hand._

“—a real shitshow,” he finishes. “I started remembering stuff as soon as I met you guys again.”

“Charmed by the power of true love, were you?” Freddie giggles.

Roger remembers suddenly his first look at this sweet curve of John’s mouth as he rested unconscious in his living room, the sharpness of Freddie’s jaw and even the love behind Brian’s eyes through the haze of fever. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, I think it was.”

“Is that why it worked in the end?” John asks. “The flower, I mean.”

He wants to say yes, but something about it doesn’t feel right. He shakes his head slowly. “No, it wasn’t love.”

“Ouch.”

“No, shut up,” he says, hushing them quietly as his mind reels even while they laugh at him. “I loved my parents. My fake parents, anyway. Gods, this is all so fucked up. I loved them but I couldn’t heal them. I couldn’t use the magic for anything, even if I wanted to. I could only cure myself. They said it was tied to my will but even when I wanted to do it I couldn’t.”

“Because you didn’t love them,” John supplies. “Not really, anyway.”

Roger shakes his head. “I couldn’t heal Brian, either. If some part of me had known I don’t love the king and queen that same part should’ve known that I love Brian, but I couldn’t cure him. It was never about what I wanted at all.”

“What’s it about, then?”

 _It is tied to your will. If it isn’t working your will isn’t strong enough_.

“The flower is still working. It’s still alive. I’m just a host. My will doesn’t matter. It’s all the flower, and the flower just wants to survive. That’s why it protects me.”

Freddie and John are looking at him blankly, but when he meets Brian’s eyes understanding seems to dawn. His face falls, mouth twisting. “Roger,” he starts.

“I was hurt,” he says slowly. “Not physically, but I was hurt. It couldn’t fix me so it fixed what was causing it, I guess. It’s no good having a host that wants to die,” he says. He picks at the blanket beneath him, tugging at the threads as he watches Freddie and John figure it out. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I know I’m not the strongest of the four of us, but don’t tell me you weren’t thinking the same.”

“It has nothing to do with strength,” Brian murmurs. “Besides, I can’t exactly say I’m complaining.”

“No,” Roger laughs quietly. “No, I guess not.”

Freddie and John have gone eerily quiet, and Roger takes a moment to just look them over and save them in his memory like this: young, free, exhausted but picking up the pieces of the life they almost lost. He never wants to make them look like that again.

“Hey,” he murmurs, and John’s eyes snap to his. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

“At some point we’re going to have a long chat about why you’re all so desperate to die for each other,” John warns glumly.

Freddie ducks forward to kiss Roger’s cheek. “Glad to have you all in the land of the mortals,” he says, a little too chipper.

“I don’t know about mortal,” Roger says. “I’ll have to solve this whole immortality thing somehow.”

“Immortality?”

“Yeah. I don’t want it to keep me alive forever.”

“It won’t,” Freddie says, frowning.

“How do you figure?”

Silently Freddie twirls a lock of Roger’s hair in his fingers before holding it up for Roger to inspect. It shines dirty blonde in the light of the fire.

“Told you it looked darker,” John says.

“Oh, shut up,” Roger gripes. “That doesn’t prove anything. Here, pass me that knife.”

“Um,” Freddie says. “No.”

“Well we’ve got to test it somehow, don’t we?”

Freddie rolls his eyes. “Yes, but we’re not going to just let you go and slice yourself open, idiot.” He leans forward into Roger’s space, ducking his head to latch his mouth onto Roger’s collarbone.

Roger grins, torn between a gasp and a laugh and feeling Brian grin against his cheek. A second later it’s over, and Freddie pulls away to examine his work with a thoughtful frown.

“It doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.”

“No,” Brian pipes up. “Gods, that’s a bit of a relief, isn’t it? Immortality is one thing, but I can’t imagine being immune to love bites.”

“That’s not even a life.”

Roger laughs breathlessly, about to respond when a horn sounds somewhere deep in the distance. It’s a clear sound, low and deep like it’s resonating from the earth itself. He’s only ever heard the royal horn a handful of times in his life but he recognizes it instantly. The rebels have taken the castle.

“Look,” Brian says.

Above the tree line a trail of lights rises slowly toward the heavens, more and more following until it rivals the Milky Way for luster. They rise from the direction of the castle, then from the port and the outer villages. The horn sounds again and even this far away Roger can hear the village’s horns join in. The kingdom is free.

“What happens now?” Brian murmurs.

Roger kisses the top of his head. “If the old plan hasn’t changed the next step is to install a temporary government until we can build a representative system. They’ll get a few people from each village to supervise things until they can set up an electoral system.”

“Spike said a friend of yours is helping them for now,” Freddie chimes in. “The former magician. Apparently he double-crossed the king.”

“Yeah?” Roger muses. “Good for him. Jim, wasn’t it?”

“Jim Beach, I believe,” John adds. “That’s what Spike said, anyway. He said he’s helping dismantle the palace’s magic and make sure the royal family is gone for good.”

“Jim Beach,” Freddie repeats incredulously. “Can you imagine? A man with that much power and a boring name like Jim Beach? God, I hope they don’t end up naming the new state after him.”

“What?” Brian laughs. “Not quite interesting enough for Freddie Mercury? Do you fancy yourself the next queen?”

“We’re all queens, darling,” Freddie scoffs. “We could do a lot better than they could, at any rate. Wouldn’t you say, Roger?”

After everything it’s a reasonable question. He spent years trying to overthrow the crown; nearly died doing it. Now the thought of being a leader makes him laugh. “I was never born to sit on the throne. Not like you were, Freddie.”

“Please,” Freddie says. He catches Roger’s eye in the firelight with a tiny smirk, running his fingers slowly through John’s hair. “I was born to be right where I am.”

John laughs. “Laying on the ground in the woods?”

“With the loves of my life,” Freddie replies grandly. “Besides, this is only the beginning for us, darling. We’ve got the world before us.”

“What comes first?”

“Fancy a fixer-upper?” Roger asks him. “If you’re so keen to get out of here there’s a house a little ways off that could use some new residents.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Cute place. You might know it. We could check it out tomorrow.”

John raises his eyebrows, stifling a laugh. “And before then?”

“Before then?” Freddie pipes up. “A night with the three of you. If we’re spending one last evening under the stars we better do it right, wouldn’t you say?”

“And before then?”

“Dinner,” Brian breathes, and John laughs.

Roger watches the lanterns drift across the sky around them. “And after?” he asks quietly, happiness bubbling up in his chest. “What happens after tomorrow?”

“Everything else,” John murmurs back. It isn’t quite an answer, not really, but Roger rolls to take in the look on his face and somehow he understands what he means anyway.

It isn’t perfect. The kingdom is going into a state of upheaval; that much he knows. Brian is only just recovering. He himself is only just recovering.

Somehow it’s perfect anyway.

Throw away the flower; get rid of it. Throw away the magic and the kingdom and the immortality and rebels and princes and crowns. Throw the whole fairy tale away and write a new one.

The same story will remain anyway.  

_Once upon a time there were four boys. They had good luck and bad luck, and the world was sometimes good to them and sometimes very bad. They loved each other so much that not even death could keep them apart. After all the dying and fighting, all the lies and confusion, after all the beginnings and endings; after all that they lived. Hell, they even did it happily ever after._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then they name the new state Miami after its first president. 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with this and my odd ramble!! I hope this ending satisfies all your questions. I thought about splitting it in half for dramatic effect but in the end I decided it was probably better to have a good decent amount of ot4 fluff to balance out your traumatic angst. It's good to have a balanced diet like that. 
> 
> You’re all lovely! Let me know what you think :-)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this post: lunaofthevalley.tumblr.com post 181560168618
> 
> (I think that's the original post? dear lord someone help me figure out how to add links)
> 
> This turned out significantly shorter than a lot of the stuff I write but I'm trying to get used to writing chapters a little shorter so that they're up quicker! Chapter two of this should be wrapped in a day or two. Let me know what you think anyway, though. Comments make the world go round and considering I'm probably gonna be up all night trying to finish the paper that I procrastinated while writing this it would certainly improve my life. Till next time!


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